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Wednesday 16 September 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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Butler, Octavia E
(1947-2006) US author who began publishing sf with "Crossover" in Clarion (anth 1971) edited by Robin Scott Wilson, but who made no real impact on the sf field until the appearance of the Patternist sequence, all released in the publisher's Doubleday Science Fiction series: Patternmaster (1976), Mind of My Mind (1977), Survivor (1978), Wild Seed (1980) and ...
Jones, Robert F
(1934-2002) US journalist (mostly for Sports Illustrated) and author whose first novel of sf interest, Blood Sport: A Journey up the Hassayampa (1974; vt Ratnose 1975), follows a man and his son up the Hassayampa River, along whose banks all Times – the future, the present and the past – as well as in a sense all rivers, exist simultaneously, a suffusion of Archipelago venues rich enough to ...
Gridban, Volsted
Pseudonym initially used by E C Tubb for three novels written for Scion Publications: Alien Universe (1952), Reverse Universe (1952) and Debracy's Drug (1953). Tubb then used the name on two novels for the Milestone Press – Planetoid Disposals, Ltd (1953) and Fugitive of Time (1953) – but Scion objected and reclaimed the name, which was used thereafter by John Russell ...
Coma
Film (1978). MGM. Directed by Michael Crichton. Written by Crichton, based on Coma (1977) by Robin Cook. Cast includes Genevieve Bujold, Michael Douglas, Rip Torn and Richard Widmark. 113 minutes. Colour. / Crichton's most commercially successful film, Coma is a present-day thriller with one sf element: the use of hospital patients, deliberately put into irreversible coma by using poisoned ...
Berington, Simon
(1680-1755) UK author, apparently a Catholic priest, the author for reasons only partly didactic of one of the first Lost World novels in the literature; it is probably the first to suggest that the lost race in question may be Ancient Egyptians (see Ancient Egypt in SF). Published anonymously, the book is described on the title page as a translation from the Italian. Its title, which is long, constitutes a synopsis: ...
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 ...