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Thursday 16 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 14 July 2026
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Carter, Stephen L
(1954- ) US lawyer and author, who also writes as by A L Shields; much of his work is nonfiction, arguing a moderate Christian take on political and cultural matters. Most of his novels are thrillers, though The Impeachment of Abraham Lincoln (2012) is an Alternate History tale whose Jonbar Point – Lincoln survives an assassination attempt in 1865 – leads into a rancorous ...
Martin, John S
(1900-1977) US editor – a senior figure in Time magazine from 1924 until after World War Two – and author, whose Near Future sf novel, General Manpower (1938), told as a Future History from a twenty-first-century perspective, depicts a world challenged by General Manpower, a corporation founded to develop J Orestes Jones's Invention of procedures based on strict ...
Hodgson, John
(1881-1936) UK inventor and author, whose vision of various forms of Utopia via Time Travel, The Time-Journey of Dr. Barton. An Engineering and Sociological Forecast based on Present Possibilities (1929 chap), attractively posits a world delivered from excesses of Technology by a cadre of Technocrats; The Great God WASTE (1933) is a ...
Ross, David D
(1955- ) US author who began publishing sf with his Dreamers of the Day sequence – The Argus Gambit (1989) and The Eighth Rank (1991) – which complicatedly traces the political and cultural consequences of a twenty-first-century Ecological mystery that first threatens South American crops, then presages a possible worldwide Disaster. The seriousness with which he ...
Elliott, Richard
Joint pseudonym of Richard E Geis and Elton T Elliott under which they wrote the Jan Norris sequence of Near Future novels set during and after a Disaster – it is a solar flare – devastates Earth, The Sword of Allah (1984) and The Burnt Lands (1985). Their other collaborations were routine. [JC]
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 ...