SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Tuesday 11 November 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 10 November 2025
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Hamilton, Peter F
(1960- ) UK author who began to publish work of genre interest with "Bodywork" in Dream Magazine for September 1990. His first sale had actually been to Fear but this story, "Deathday", did not appear until the February 1991 issue. Though he is best known for his Space Operas – typically massive volumes arrayed in series – he has published several short stories of ...
Britton, David
(1945-2020) UK publisher and author, founder with Michael Butterworth (and briefly Charles Partington) of Savoy Books in 1976 in Manchester, whose early list included works by Michael Moorcock, Charles Platt and Jack Trevor Story. With Butterworth, he edited The Savoy Book (anth 1978) and ...
Niven, Larry
Working name of US author Laurence van Cott Niven (1938- ). He was born in California, where he set many of his stories, and gained a BA in mathematics from Washburn University, Kansas. From his first publication, "The Coldest Place" in If for December 1964, he set his mark on the US sf field as a Hard SF writer of remarkable vigour and inventiveness, soon winning four short-fiction Hugos: for ...
Marvel Tales
1. US Semiprozine (the first 3 issues small-Digest-size, #4 digest-size and #5 letter-size), five issues May 1934 to Summer 1935. Published by Fantasy Publications, Everett, Pennsylvania; edited by William L Crawford, who was not only the publisher but also set the type himself. Some issues were distributed with several different covers. Distribution was very limited; Marvel Tales ...
Smith, George O
(1911-1981) US electronics engineer and author, most active and prominent in the 1940s in Astounding Science-Fiction, in which his first story, "QRM – Interplanetary", appeared in October 1942: the tale both began his sf career and initiated his most famous endeavour, the Venus Equilateral Series of stories (all in Astounding except for one late addition) about 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 ...