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Wednesday 14 May 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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Fabian, Stephen E
(1930-2025) American artist, sometimes credited as Steve Fabian or simply Fabian. The self-trained Fabian first worked as an electronic engineer, but he began contributing art to Fanzines in the late 1960s and became a full-time professional artist in 1973. He did a number of covers and interior art for SF Magazines, mostly Amazing, Fantastic, and ...
Baird, Wilhelmina
Pseudonym of Scottish author Joyce Carstairs Hutchinson (1935- ), who began publishing sf with "Mantrap" for New Worlds in June 1961, writing this and other early work as by Kathleen James; she soon became inactive in the field, however, returning only as Wilhelmina Baird with the Cass sequence of novels set in a noirish Cyberpunk-like Near Future England, and comprising ...
Van Kampen, Robert D
(1938-1999) US businessman and author, whose fundamentalist Christian beliefs, focused on the Rapture, tacitly shape his only sf novel, The Fourth Reich (1997), which Equipoisally creates a Hitler Wins scenario through the recovery of Hitler's soul from Hell and its insertion through Cloning into a human embryo. He soon becomes ruler of all Russia, and as the anti- ...
Palmer, Suzanne
(1968- ) US author and computer system administrator who began to publish work of genre interest with "The Ins and Outs of Intergalactic Diplomacy" in Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine for August/September 2005. She topped the Asimov's Readers' Poll in various categories (including Poetry) from 2016 to 2020. Her Hard SF story ...
Pacific Comics
US independent Comics publisher founded by Bill and Steve Schanes; a pioneer in creator-owned comics properties. Pacific began in 1971 as a comics mail order retailer, then went into distributing comics for major publishers until it was successful enough by 1981, that it began issuing its own titles. The Schanes knew Jack Kirby and were able to bring him out of retirement with an agreement that he would own all rights to any characters ...
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 ...