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Sunday 8 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.
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Sallis, James
(1944-2026) US musician, poet and author, briefly active in New Worlds during its Michael Moorcock-directed New-Wave phase; he began to publish work of genre interest in this context with "Kazoo" (August 1967 New Worlds) and co-edited the magazine 1968-1969. His clearly acknowledged models in the French avant garde and the gnomic brevity of much of his work ...
Theroux, Marcel
(1968- ) Uganda-born broadcaster and author, in UK from early childhood, son of Paul Theroux. Of his novels, The Confessions of Mycroft Holmes: A Paper Chase (2001) hints at the fantastic in its conflation of a recently dead relative of the narrator and Mycroft Holmes (see Sherlock Holmes); and The Secret Books (2017), by treating the past century of European history as a ...
Hinchcliffe, Philip
(1944- ) UK television producer, most notably for Doctor Who series, who has also written some Ties for the sequence, including Doctor Who and the Seeds of Doom (1977), Doctor Who and the Masque of Mandragora (1977) and Doctor Who and the Keys of Marinus (1980). In his pomp as a producer, during the years Tom Baker (see Doctor Who) was transforming the role, the ...
Ganpat
Pseudonym of Indian-born soldier and author Martin L Gompertz (1886-1951), probably brought to the UK in infancy, in active service in East Africa during World War One, retiring in 1939 as a Brigadier General. His adventure novels, usually set in remote regions of Asia and show very clearly the influence of H Rider Haggard; several are of sf interest, the best-known being perhaps the two novels making up the ...
Arrow, William
A House Name used by Ballantine Books for the Return to the Planet of the Apes Ties, based not on the Planet of the Apes films but on the later animated Television series. William Rotsler wrote #1 Visions from Nowhere (1976) and #3 Man, the Hunted Animal (1976); ...
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 ...