SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Sunday 12 July 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 7 July 2026
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Blue Bolt
US Comic (1940-1953). Novelty Press (#1-#101), Star Publications (#102-#119). 119 issues. Artists include Harold DeLay, Jay Disbrow, Joe Donohoe, Ben Flinton, Jack Kirby, George Mandel and Jim Wilcox. Script writers include Jay Disbrow, Ray Gill, Tom Gill, Milt Hammer, Henry Kiefer, Bill O'Connor, Joe Simon, Mickey Spillane and Jack Warren. Initially 68 pages per ...
Enstrom, Robert
(1946- ) US industrial chemist and author whose first novel, Encounter Program (1977), attempts to deal with a late-century sf problem – how to cope with Aliens when we encounter them – in an idiom derived from Space Operas published 50 years earlier, when the problem was easier to solve. Beta Colony (1980), in which a colony planet attempts to re-colonize ...
Roberts, Robin
(1957- ) US academic – professor emeritus of English and gender studies at the University of Arkansas – who began to publish work of genre interest with an essay on Doris Lessing, "The Paradigm of Frankenstein: Reading Canopus in Argos in the Context of Science Fiction by Women" in Extrapolation for Spring 1995. She also contributed a number of book reviews to ...
Frank, Pat
Pseudonym of US journalist and author Harry Hart Frank (1907-1964) who served as a government official during World War Two, later serving with the UN. Though his three sf novels are well known within the field, Frank was not generally identified as an sf author. His first novel, Mr Adam (1946), exploits the fears of contamination felt in the USA after Hiroshima. All men but one are sterilized by a nuclear Disaster; the experiences of the sole fertile ...
Williams, Charles
(1886-1945) UK poet, lay theologian and author whose novels are essentially theological Fantasy thrillers; in service but through bad health not in combat during World War One. He was closely associated with C S Lewis and J R R Tolkien as part of the Oxford reading group known as the Inklings. His romantic and obscurely devout use 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 ...