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Saturday 12 July 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.
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Sherriff, R C
(1896-1975) UK screenwriter, playwright and author, active from 1919. He is best known for his hit play, the nonfantastic Journey's End (performed 9 December 1928 Apollo Theatre, London: 1929), directed by James Whale, who also directed the 1930 film version; it remains the best-known play about World War One, in which Sherriff had served 1914-1917. He also wrote the screenplay for Whale's version of the The ...
Smith, Gavin G
(1968- ) Scottish author who made his debut with the grimly told Veteran sequence comprising Veteran (2010) and War in Heaven (2011), set initially on a Cyberpunk-inflected war-torn distant Near Future Earth, after 60 years of an unequal war with the Alien civilization known only as Them. The frequently invoked ...
Clarke, Cassandra Rose
(1983- ) US author who began to publish work of genre interest with "The Cowboy's Wife" in Zahir for Summer 2009, as Cassandra Clarke; her Assassin's Curse sequence beginning with The Assassin's Curse (2012) is fantasy, heavy with adventures. She is of sf interest for some individual titles. The Mad Scientist's Daughter (2013) is set in a Near Future America which has suffered survived depopulation, ...
Aiken, John
(1913-1990) US-born UK author, son of Conrad Aiken (1889-1973) [see The Encyclopedia of Fantasy under links below] and brother of Joan Aiken and Jane Aiken Hodge (1917-2009). John Aiken published his first sf story, "Camouflage", in Astounding for April 1943, in the Probability Zero sequence of short-shorts (see Flash Fiction); though his ...
Gannon, Charles E
(1960- ) US academic, a professor of English at St Bonaventure University, and author. He has worked extensively in Game Design and game writing – especially for the Traveller series of Role Playing Games – as well as working as a scriptwriter and producer in New York City. / He began to publish fiction of genre interest with "The Gift of the Magi" in ...
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 ...