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Thursday 12 March 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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Daugherty, Michael
(1954- ). US experimental classical composer, with a pronounced interest in sf as well as more general pop culture. His early symphony Metropolis Symphony for Orchestra (1988-1993) is based on the Superman comics; UFO for Solo Percussion and Orchestra (1999) was inspired by the 1947 Roswell incident (see UFOs); and Time Machine (2003) is scored for three orchestras, ...
Carter, P Youngman
(1904-1969) UK artist, editor, illustrator and author, active from the early 1920s, early work including a cover for Blackkerchief Dick (1923) by Margery Allingham; they were married from 1927 until her death, after which he completed her final (nonfantastic) novel in the Albert Campion detective series and wrote two more as Youngman Carter. The first of these, Mr Campion's Farthing (1969), based on an outline by ...
Coleman, Claire G
(1974- ) Australian author, more fully described as Wirlomin-Noongar-Australian; her first novel Terra Nullius (2017) comes close to allegory (but escapes) in its depiction of what seems to be a fantasticated rendering of the Aboriginal experience in Australia, but which turns out to be a relatively deadpan but strongly moving narrative set in the distant Near Future where the Aboriginals are in fact all that remain of the ...
Gods and Demons
The word "God" (or "Gods") is one of the commonest of all nouns in sf story and novel titles. Although this frequency is partly fuelled by the interest in Religion that has characterized sf from its earliest days, we must seek further to explain the sheer scale of the phenomenon. / The sf writer is a creator of imaginary worlds; in that sense his activity is godlike. It is, then, natural that he or she should especially enjoy fantasies (some might say delusions ...
Gansovsky, Sever
(1918-1990) Russian author, a dominant figure of the 1960s and 1970s; he was well known for his Radio plays, some of them sf, and also well regarded for his Hard-SF short stories and novellas, which were assembled in Shagi V Neizvestnoie ["Steps into the Unknown"] (coll 1963), Shest' Geniev ["Six Geniuses"] (coll 1965), Tri Shaga K Opasnosti ["Three Steps Towards Danger"] (coll 1969), ...
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 ...