SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Saturday 15 August 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 10 August 2026
Sponsor of the day: David Cowhig
Crowley, John
(1942-2026) US teacher and author who also worked in documentary films and television for some time beginning in 1966. His sf novels have had a considerable impact on the field, and his fantasies established him as a figure whose work courteously but deeply stretched the boundaries of genre literature. / His first novel, The Deep (1975), is set on a flat discworld resting on a pillar that extends beyond measurement into the circumambient galactic Deep, in which very few stars ...
Gilbert, John
(1926- ) US author whose sf novel, Aiki (1986), sets a gladiatorial martial-arts tale in twenty-first-century New York. [JC]
Scorpion, The
US Pulp magazine, one issue, April 1939, published by Popular Publications; edited by Ejler and Edith Jakobsson. The Scorpion was in every respect a sequel to The Octopus, only the alias of the villainous protagonist being changed. The sadistic, borderline-sf feature novel, "Satan's Incubator" by Randolph Craig (Norvell W Page), was reprinted by Robert E ...
Ashley, Allen
(? - ) UK author who began publishing fiction of genre interest with the horror tale, "Dead to the World" as by Allen A Lucas in Fantasy Tales for Winter 1982, and who published frequently in the 1990s; much of this material is assembled in Somnambulists (coll 2004). A short novel, The Planet Suite (1996 chap), is characteristically built around loose permutations – less rigorous than ...
Gatiss, Mark
(1966- ) UK actor and author, best known in his sometime capacity as a member of The League of Gentlemen, a comedy team on BBC radio and television since 1995, acting in and co-authoring a spin-off film, The League of Gentlemen's Apocalypse (2005). Although not strictly science-fictional, The League of Gentlemen's work – mainly focusing on the fictional Northern English town of Royston Vasey – makes frequent reference to film and ...
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 ...