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Saturday 6 December 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.
Site updated on 1 December 2025
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Stoppard, Tom
Working name of Czech-born playwright and screenwriter Tomáš Straussler (1937-2025), in the UK since 1946, the Stoppard surname being acquired from his stepfather when his widowed mother remarried in 1945. His early dramatic work was characterized by extravagant wit and wordplay, and an Absurdist application of logic to surreal or insane situations. Following the broadcast of several Radio plays, his ...
Nader, Ralph
(1934- ) US lawyer and political activist whose campaigns have targeted various issues, with an increasing emphasis on Ecology and Climate Change; he has run for President of the United States four times. Of specific sf interest is "Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!" (2009), an Alternate History tale in which seventeen "super-rich" individuals, starting ...
Harben, Will N
(1858-1919) US author, most of whose work variously depicts life in the South, though at least three are detective novels featuring the sleuth Minard Hendricks. In the Year Ten Thousand (November 1892 Arena; 1917 chap) is a Utopian tale whose ancient narrator describes life in 2320, after vegetarianism fixes the Homo sapiens body, and 4051, after Telepathy fixes our souls; ...
West, Alroy
Pseudonym of UK author Michael Roy Hastings (1907-1980), who was born Herbert Roy Higgins, but normally wrote adventure thrillers as by Michael Hastings, taking that name by deed poll in 1939; he also published some thrillers as by Gabriel Hythe. As West, he wrote at least one tale of some sf interest (and perhaps several); one of these, The Black Matador (1937), describes the effects of the Invention of a device capable of blocking all electronic ...
Benett, Léon
Working name of French artist and illustrator Hippolyte Léon Benet (1839-1916), active from around 1867. Along with Édouard Riou, he is the best known of the many illustrators for Jules Verne's Voyages Extraordinaires sequence, beginning with Around the World in Eighty Days (1873), and providing illustrations and covers for twenty-five later novels in the huge project. Other French authors whose ...
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 ...