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Sunday 19 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.
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Johnson, Toby
Working name of US author Edwin Clark Johnson (1945- ), whose Plague: A Novel About Healing (1987) is a Near Future medical thriller, and whose Secret Matter (1990; rev 2005) is a First Contact novel set in San Francisco after a devastating earthquake, the encounter leading to a clement gay Utopia. [JC]
Watson, J C
(? - ) South African author of Shadow Over the Rand: A South African Novel (1955), an sf novel set in the very Near Future in Johannesburg as a Pandemic caused by a strange "virus tuberculosis" comes close to destroying first the city (where the death toll nears 50%) then the country. But a research doctor develops a vaccine (see Medicine). The plague ...
de Mille, William C
(1878-1955) US playwright, film director and screenwriter, older brother of Cecil B DeMille (1881-1959). (Note that although Cecil compressed his name to DeMille, William did not.) He wrote two plays of sf interest: "Food": A Tragedy of the Future in One Act (performed 1912 as Fifty Years from Now; 1914 chap) with Margaret Scott Oliver, a Satire in which food has become so expensive that a marriage may founder on the husband's jealous destruction ...
Cramer, Kathryn
(1962- ) US critic and editor; daughter of John Cramer, married to David G Hartwell from 1997 until his death in 2016, who began publishing fiction of genre interest with "Forbidden Knowledge" in Mathenauts (anth 1987) edited by Rudy Rucker; she has been involved in various capacities with the ...
Holmes, Guy
(? - ) US author whose P.E.A.C.E. (2000) is a Near Future Dystopia set in a New York oppressed by constant surveillance that has transformed the city into a Police Enforced Anti-Crime Environment (note acronym). [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 ...