SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Friday 16 October 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 12 October 2026
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Edwards, Malcolm
(1949-2026) UK editor, critic and publisher, educated at Cambridge, where he graduated in anthropology. Active in UK sf Fandom in the 1970s and early 1980s, he published the first complete text of James Blish's "The Science in Science Fiction" (May 1951-May 1952 Science Fiction Quarterly) in his Fanzine Quicksilver #2 in 1971; edited the ...
Franklin, Stephen
(1922-1985) UK-born Canadian journalist and author, in Canada from early adulthood. In his Knowledge Park (1972), the Ontario-Quebec border north of Lake Abitibi houses a community of electronically conjoined Libraries in an edificial Keep known as the Igloos of Minerva, which comes to contain the shared memories of human civilization. [JC]
Mad Max
Film (1979). Mad Max Pty. Directed by George Miller. Written by James McCausland and Miller, based on a story by Miller. Cast includes Tim Burns, Mel Gibson, Hugh Keays-Byrne and Joanne Samuel. 100 minutes, cut to 91 minutes. Colour. / This low-budget exploitation movie builds up to the vigilante-style revenge of spaced-out policeman Max Rockatansky (Gibson) – who is almost as disturbed as his antagonists – on the motorcycle gang that ...
Wilkins, Lura M
(1879-1963) US author whose awkwardly mixed-genre "Over There": Chronicles of an English Engineer "Gone West" (1935) is presented as its author's stenographic recording of reminiscences of the horrors of World War One on the part of a British engineer. His narrative also describes his discovery of an Underground Utopia, whose entrance is on the dark side of the ...
Jakobson, Lars
(1959- ) Swedish librarian and author. An sf enthusiast since childhood, Lars Jakobson wrote his examination thesis at the Swedish Librarian college on sf published in Sweden 1953-1976. His work is founded on a wide reading and deep affection for classical sf, but at the same time also in his fascination with modernist literary techniques (see Modernism in SF) and in transhumanist philosophy. His first ...
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 ...