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Thursday 13 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.
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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 ...
Tucker, Wilson
(1914-2006) US author, orphaned, brought up in Bloomington and Normal, Illinois, where he set some of his fiction, some early stories being signed Bob Tucker; involved in American Fandom from around 1929. Beginning in 1931, he worked as a professional film projectionist, retiring in 1971, and always spoke of his writing – more than twenty books, half of them sf, half of them mysteries – as an avocation. During the 1930s Tucker was exceedingly active as a ...
Space Elevator
An increasingly popular item of sf Transportation hardware since its introduction to the genre by the near-simultaneous appearance of Arthur C Clarke's The Fountains of Paradise (1979) and Charles Sheffield's The Web Between the Worlds (1979; exp 1989). The space elevator's basic concept is simply that of a tethered "skyhook" cable – fixed at ...
Saadawi, Ahmed
(1973- ) Iraqi screenwriter, poet, documentary film maker and author; he is of sf interest for Farankanstayin fi Baghdad ["Frankenstein in Baghdad"] (2013; trans Jonathan Wright as Frankenstein in Baghdad 2018), set in 2005 during the American occupation of Iraq. A Baghdad merchant sews together the body parts of victims of the violence that spring; this spatchcocked corpse is soon possessed by the recently dead soul of a security guard (see ...
Lynde, Francis
(1856-1930) US author, prolific in several popular genres, including detective thrillers and Westerns, these two forms being brought together in Scientific Sprague (coll of linked stories 1912), featuring the exploits of the eponymous detective-cum-engineer, who defends a Western railroad (see Transportation) against thieves, accidents and Inventions in the hands of villains. Several of ...
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 ...