SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Tuesday 15 July 2025
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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Griffiths, John
(1934- ) UK author in whose sf novel, The Survivors (1965), an assorted group of folk hang on in a Cornish cave after China starts World War Three. A nonfiction (and significantly unliterary) study, Three Tomorrows: American, British and Soviet Science Fiction (1980), treats the genre as a forum, defined – according to the sociological principles of Karl Mannheim (1893-1947), author of ...
MacDonald, Philip
(1900-1980) UK-born screenwriter and author of detective novels, son of Ronald MacDonald and grandson of George MacDonald, in California from 1931. He was best known for a series of detective novels, most featuring the amateur investigator Anthony Gethryn, beginning with The Rasp (1924) and including the remarkable serial-killer procedurals Murder Gone Mad (1931) and X v. Rex ...
Reynolds, Anthony
(? - ) Australian author who has worked for Games Workshop, which owns the Warhammer 40,000 universe, and who has written Ties for that universe, beginning with Warhammer: Mark of Chaos (2006). Of more sf interest are his contributions to the Warhammer 40,000 subseries, beginning with Warhammer 40,000: Dark Apostle (2007); his tales revel duly in the bleak and ...
Chipman, C P
(1878-1956) US author of stories for the Boys' Papers; his two sf tales of interest are An Aerial Runaway: The Balloon Adventures of Rod & Tod in North & South America (1901) with W P Chipman, who was his father [see his entry for details]; and The Last Cruise of the Electra: Being the Strange Adventures of Two American Lads on Land and Sea (1902) solo. [JC]
Ryan, Carrie
(1978- ) US author of a Young Adult Dystopian sequence – the Forest of Hands and Teeth series comprising The Forest of Hands and Teeth (2009), The Dead-Tossed Waves (2010) and The Dark and Hollow Places (2011) – set initially, some generations after a civilization-destroying Disaster, in a ...
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 ...