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Wednesday 11 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 9 February 2026
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Carver, Jeffrey A
(1949-2026) US author who began publishing sf with "... Of No Return" in Fiction Magazine for 1974. His first novel, Seas of Ernathe (1976), which serves as an introduction to the loose Star Rigger sequence of Space Operas, showed early signs of a love of plot and thematic complexity which would take him some time, and several novels, to control. The continuation, Star Rigger's Way (1978), for instance, combines quest ...
Reid, Iain
(1981- ) Canadian author whose novels to date, beginning with I'm Thinking of Ending Things (2016) are horror; that first novel was filmed as I'm Thinking of Ending Things (2020), written and directed by Charlie Kaufman. Fog (2018) strongly evokes Horror in SF through its frame narrative: in the Near Future, a married couple is ...
Bretnor, Reginald
(1911-1992) US author and anthologist, born Alfred Reginald Kahn – he changed his name legally to Bretnor after World War Two – in Vladivostok, Siberia, but resident in the US from 1920; active after World War Two in a number of genres as an author of both fiction and nonfiction. His interest in military theory, which first generated articles and Decisive Warfare (1969), later inspired the Future at War series of anthologies: ...
Duane, Diane E
(1952- ) US author, most respected for her work in Fantasy. She was married in 1987 to fantasy author Peter Morwood, lived with him in the Republic of Ireland until his death, and collaborated with him on several books. She began writing fantasies with the Tale of the Five sequence: The Door into Fire (1979) and The Door into Shadow (1984), both assembled as ...
Bizarre
US Semiprozine. 1 issue (January 1941), edited by Walter E Marconette and J Chapman Miske, effectively a continuation of Marconette's earlier Fanzine Scienti-Snaps. Professional in appearance, with a colour cover by Hannes Bok, it is noted primarily for publishing for the first time the original but previously unused ending of A Merritt's novel ...
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 ...