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Sunday 14 June 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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Duffy, Maureen
(1933-2026) UK author, active from around 1950, several of whose books focused on London, including Capital (1975), a complex set of era-switching meditations – including a Neanderthal man's thoughts about the future – on the deep mythos of the city. The novel influenced Michael Moorcock's Mother London (1988) (as the author acknowledged clearly), and similar later works by Iain ...
Crowder, Herbert
(1925-2022) US MIT graduate who served in World War Two and is the author of three Technothrillers of some sf interest: Ambush at Osirak (1988), with a threatened Israeli attack on a nuclear reactor installation (see Power Sources) in Iraq, which country has been armed with a Russian super-Weapon; Weatherhawk (1990), which involves ...
Vornholt, John
(1951- ) US author who has also written as by Carolyn Goode, known chiefly for Ties: these include a long string of Star Trek: The Next Generation novels beginning with Masks (1989) and ending with A Time to Die (2004), plus other novels in the overall Star Trek universe; and the Babylon 5 novel ...
Whitmarsh, H Phelps
(1863-1935) Canadian-born journalist and author, in Australia and USA before moving to the Philippines in 1899; he is of sf interest for The Golden Talisman (1899), a Lost Race tale set within a frame of mountains deep within Asia, where the inhabitants of the Kingdom of Kaffiria suffer from a lack of sweet-smelling flora. [JC]
Davis, Harold A
(1903-1955) US author known mainly for his contributions to the Doc Savage universe, writing or collaborating under the series House Name Kenneth Robeson. [JC/DRL]
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 ...