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Saturday 6 December 2025
Welcome to the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Fourth Edition. Some sample entries appear below. Click here for the Introduction; here for what we mean by Science Fiction; here for the masthead; here for some Statistics; here for the Acknowledgments; here for the FAQ; here for advice on citations. Find entries via the search box above (more details here) or browse the menu categories in the grey bar at the top of this page.
Site updated on 1 December 2025
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Stoppard, Tom
Working name of Czech-born playwright and screenwriter Tomáš Straussler (1937-2025), in the UK since 1946, the Stoppard surname being acquired from his stepfather when his widowed mother remarried in 1945. His early dramatic work was characterized by extravagant wit and wordplay, and an Absurdist application of logic to surreal or insane situations. Following the broadcast of several Radio plays, his ...
Gibson, Naomi
(1988- ) English author now in Scotland, whose first novel, the Young Adult Every Line of You (2021), traces the perhaps undue intimacy between its young protagonist and the boyfriend-like AI-powered Android she has created to help her solve a life crisis. Together they engage in some activities that seem dubiously legal. [JC]
Wylie, Philip
(1902-1971) US author who began publishing work of genre interest with "Seeing New York by Kiddie Car" (1926 Zest). By World War Two he had become notorious for his flamboyant but penetrating surveys of American mores and behaviour; he coined the term "Momism" to describe a tendency among Americans to sacralize motherhood, thus making family dynamics and morality impenetrable to reflection (see Feminism). Of his non-sf works, he probably remains best ...
Johnson, Kij
(1960- ) US author who began publishing work of genre interest with "Roadkill" in Tales of the Unanticipated for Winter/Spring 1988, and who is perhaps best known for her impressive first solo novel, The Fox Woman (2000), a fantasy set in a vision of archaic Japan whose protagonist more closely resembles a figure out of fable bound by destiny than a Talking Animal [see The ...
Samuelson, David N
(1939- ) US sf critic and professor of English at California State University, Long Beach. His PhD dissertation (University of Southern California) was later published by Arno Press as a book, Visions of Tomorrow: Six Journeys from Outer to Inner Space (1975): it contains analyses of novels by Isaac Asimov, J G Ballard, Algis ...
Clute, John
(1940- ) Canadian critic, editor and author, in the UK from 1969; married to Judith Clute from 1964, partner of Elizabeth Hand since 1996. He began to publish work of genre interest with an sf-tinged poem "Carcajou Lament" in Triquarterly for Winter 1960 [ie Autumn 1959]; he began consistently publishing sf reviews in his "New Fiction" column for the Toronto Star (1966-1967), and later in ...