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Tuesday 17 February 2026
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 16 February 2026
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Ascher, Maurice
(1873-1965) German author, much of his nonfiction being studies in Judaism and Jewish issues. He is of sf interest for Gulliver's Neue Reise ["Gulliver's New Journey"] (1915), a Fantastic Voyage tale based on Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels (1726; rev 1735), Gulliver in this case being an aviator who makes a crash-landing on an unknown ...
Appleyard, Bryan
(1951- ) UK author whose sf novel, The First Church of the New Millennium (1994), conflates, not entirely convincingly (see Mainstream Writers of SF), two forms of human aspiration: the building of a great new cathedral to stand athwart the perils of the new century, and a manned mission to Mars. [JC]
Robots [film]
Animated film (2005). Blue Sky Studios/ 20th Century Fox. Directed by Chris Wedge and Carlos Saldanha. Written by David Lindsay-Abaire, Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel, based on a story by Ron Mita, Jim McClain and Mita. Cast includes Halle Berry, Mel Brooks, Ewan McGregor and Robin Williams. 91 minutes. Colour. / Were it not for the quality of the CGI, one would be forgiven for thinking this example of committee-designed ...
John, Owen
(1918-1995) UK author, mostly of spy thrillers, whose Computer Takes All (1967) as by John Bourne visualizes a Dystopian outcome to the rise of the Computer; and whose Haggai Godin sequence sometimes comes close to sf, especially The Shadow in the Sea (1972), which ventures into Near Future territory in its description of a mysterious Russian submarine off the British ...
Rienow, Leona
(1903-1983) US author whose short Dark Pool Prehistoric SF sequence for children comprises The Bewitched Caverns (1948) and The Dark Pool (1949). With her husband Robert Rienow (1909-1989), a political scientist, she later wrote The Year of the Last Eagle (1970), a sour Near-Future comedy about Ecology, set in 1989. The hero's job, dejectedly ...
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 ...