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Saturday 7 February 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 6 February 2026
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Sallis, James
(1944-2026) US musician, poet and author, briefly active in New Worlds during its Michael Moorcock-directed New-Wave phase; he began to publish work of genre interest in this context with "Kazoo" (August 1967 New Worlds) and co-edited the magazine 1968-1969. His clearly acknowledged models in the French avant garde and the gnomic brevity of much of his work ...
Mafi, Tahereh
(1988- ) US author whose Shatter Me sequence of Young Adult Near Future Dystopian tales, beginning with Shatter Me (2011), combines coming-of-age romance with a not unfamiliar depiction of an America gone savagely wrong. The young protagonist, cursed/blessed with a Psi Power through which she is capable of painfully draining ...
Willis, Walt
(1919-1999) Irish civil servant, editor and author, one of the most notable members of Irish and world Fandom, whose main period of activity ran from 1948 to the mid-1960s. He co-edited and wrote for two classic Fanzines, Slant and Hyphen, and was a highly regarded columnist under the regular title "The Harp That Once or Twice" in Quandry and other fanzines ...
Dunn, Saul
Pseudonym used by UK author and publisher Philip M Dunn (1946-2007) for the original publication of his books in the UK, though he used his own name for their US release; he was also the director of Pierrot Publishing, a packaging-cum-publishing firm which became insolvent in 1981, owing large sums. Dunn was reported to have moved to India for religious reasons, but eventually returned to England. Releases generated by the company included Brian W Aldiss's ...
McMasters, William H
(1874-1968) US journalist, playwright and author whose Revolt: An American Novel (1919) he claimed, with some justification, to have had a central role in 1920 in the exposure of Charles Ponzi (1882-1949), who gave his name to the pyramid scheme where new deposits are used to pay off old investors until the structure implodes. Revolt: An American Novel (1919) is a Near Future tale set in 1940, when two American political parties are ...
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 ...