SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Wednesday 12 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 ...
Sullivan, Sheila
(1927-2007) Malaysian-born editor and author, in the UK from an early age; her critical nonfiction was usually written as Sheila Bathurst. Her sf novel Summer Rising (1975; vt The Calling of Bara 1976) unpacks an adventure beginning in a Post-Holocaust London devastated by the slow collapse of civilization as intensified by a Pandemic; the protagonist, who has been raped, ...
Minor, Wendell
(1944- ) US artist, author and illustrator, initially in association with Paul Bacon, whose concern and hands-on responsibility for typography he shares; his first covers date from 1968. The intensely enhanced Magic Realism of his work, much of it depicting rural America, has been influential from the 1970s. In contrast to the overdetermined populousness of the work of Norman Rockwell (1894-1978), his works ...
Bell, Neal
(? - ) US author whose sf novel Gone to Be Snakes Now (1974), set initially in an isolated Keep in a Ruined Earth America, traces events after the Mutant-haunted, Sex-irradiated wilderness beyond the walls is entered. [JC]
Gavin, Jamila
(1941- ) Indian-born children's author in UK from the early 1950s, prolific in several genres since she began publishing in 1979. Of sf interest are Ali and the Robots (1986), a not particularly challenging tale involving Robots, and the more ambitious The Wormholers (1996), an Alternate Cosmos tale. [JC]
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 ...