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Sunday 12 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.
Site updated on 7 July 2026
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Anthropology
Anthropology is the scientific study of the genus Homo, especially its species H. sapiens. Physical anthropology deals with the history of H. sapiens and its immediate evolutionary precursors (some of which in fact coexisted with H. sapiens); cultural anthropology (ethnology) deals with the contemporary diversity of human cultures (see also Sociology). The founding fathers of the science – Sir Edward Tylor (1832-1917) and Sir ...
Cawdron, Peter
(1967- ) New Zealand-born author, in Australia for many years, whose early novels, beginning with The Road to Hell (2011 ebook), seem usually to have been self-published until the teens of the twenty-first century, most of his stories being Space Operas heavy on action, often involving First Contact. An early example, Anomaly (2011), which is set on Earth, involves the arrival ...
Wilson, Thomas H
Pseudonym of author Cecil Burleigh (1850-1921), author of Dime-Novel tales for boys under a wide variety of names; of sf interest is Lost at the North Pole; Or, the Kingdom of Ice (1888 The Boys of New York as by J G Bradley; 1899 chap) as Capt Thomas H Wilson, a Lost World tale featuring two warring races around the clement North Pole, one comprised of gigantic Blacks who are of course primitive, the other ...
Angelo
Pseudonym of the unidentified US author (? -? ) of The Dancing Imps of the Wine; Or, Stories and Fables (coll 1880), which contains some fantasies, and Adventures of an Atom: Its Autobiography, by Itself (1880), a Tale of Circulation made up of a series of interwoven anecdotes narrated by the eponymous entity, which it declares of itself (see ...
Smith, Michael Marshall
(1965- ) UK author, also raised in South Africa and the USA. He has published sf and horror under his full name, and thrillers as by Michael Marshall [see Checklist below]. He has also worked as a writer for radio and film. His first publication of genre interest was "The Man Who Drew Cats" in Dark Voices 2 (anth 1990) edited by David Sutton and Stephen Jones; it won the British Fantasy Award in 1991. Since then, he has continued to produce stories, mostly ...
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 ...