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Sunday 7 June 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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Duffy, Maureen
(1933-2026) UK author several of whose books focused on London, including Capital (1975), a complex set of era-switching meditations – including a Neanderthal man's thoughts about the future – on the deep mythos of the city. The novel influenced Michael Moorcock's Mother London (1988) (as the author acknowledged clearly), and similar later works by Iain ...
Skene, Anthony
Pseudonym of UK author George Norman Philips (1884-1972) used primarily for his Sexton Blake tales featuring a character of his own creation, the albino Antihero M Zenith, or Zenith the Albino, who first appears in "A Duel to the Death" (21 November 1919 Union Jack #837), with many stories to follow, including Monsieur Zenith (1936; vt Monsieur Zenith the Albino 2001), his last appearance being "The Affair of the Bronze ...
Hay, George
Working name – in life as well as in print – of UK author, editor and sf enthusiast Oswyn Robert Tregonwell Hay (1922-1997), born Oswyn Robert Cohn, who began publishing sf in the early 1950s with Flight of the "Hesper" (1951), Man, Woman – and Android (1951), This Planet for Sale (1952), plus Terra! (1952) as by King Lang, a House Name. ...
Adderley, James
(1861-1942) UK minister, amateur actor, social reformist and author, of whose novels Behold the Days Come: A Fancy in Christian Politics (1907) generates, through Near Future debates between Christians and Socialists, a unified Christian Socialism central to the shaping of a better world, whose beginnings are depicted through a Utopian vision of the English Garden City. [JC]
Jales, Mark
Pseudonym of Ronald Harry W Jales (1924-1979), UK author who also wrote thrillers as Mark Hayman and Will Palmer. In science fiction he is known only for his contributions to the Robert Hale Limited list of sf adventures, beginning with Prelude to Exodus (1979) [JC/SH]
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 ...