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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.
Site updated on 2 June 2026
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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 ...
Spaceman
UK Comic (1953-1954). 15 issues. Gould-Light Company. Art and scripts mainly by Ron Embleton and Norman Light. Usually three strips per issue. Cover in colour, strips in black and white. / Each issue featured one or two stories starring Captain Future (unrelated to the US Captain Future). The captain is a member of the Star Rovers Patrol, formed in 2020 (34 years after the first Moon landing), ...
Pratt, Tim
(1976- ) US author and poet, a graduate of Clarion Science Fiction Writers' Workshop (East) who is currently a senior editor of Locus, for which he has written many reviews and obituaries. He also writes as T A Pratt and as by T Aaron Payton. Pratt began to publish fiction of genre interest with "53rd Annual Mantis Homecoming Dance" in ...
Ruined Earth
Term used in this encyclopedia for the longer-range sf aftermath of Disaster and Holocaust scenarios. First comes the cataclysm, then the Post-Holocaust struggle with a general emphasis on survival and adaptation. If humanity avoids extinction, the details of past technology and the fall of civilization are apt to become increasingly blurred – and often mythologized – with each new ...
Clarke, Neil
(1966- ) US magazine editor and anthologist, best known for publishing and editing the award-winning Clarkesworld, which had its first issue as an Online Magazine October 2006 and is now available in print and other forms. The magazine won the Hugo for Semiprozine in 2010, 2011 and 2013; a ...
Robinson, Roger
(1943- ) UK computer programmer, bibliographer and publisher, active in UK Fandom for many years. The Writings of Henry Kenneth Bulmer (1983 chap; rev 1984 chap) is an exhaustive Bibliography of one of the most prolific sf writers, Kenneth Bulmer, and Who's Hugh?: An SF Reader's Guide to Pseudonyms (1987) is similarly exhaustive in its ...