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Wednesday 16 July 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 16 July 2025
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Williams, Tess
(1954-2025) UK-born teacher, editor and author, in Australia for many years, there receiving a degree in literature from Curtin University and an MA in creative writing from the University of Western Australia. She began publishing work of genre interest with "The Padwan Affair" in She's Fantastical (anth 1995) edited by Judith Raphael Buckrich and Lucy Sussex. Of sf interest are two novels: Map of Power (1996), set mostly in a ...
Campbell, Marilyn
(1948- ) US author whose loose Innerworld romantic Space Opera sequence beginning with Pyramid of Dreams (1992) is set in the Hollow Earth within our planet from where it obscurely dominates life on the surface. Romances and intrigues ricochet back and forth. There is considerable Sex. The pattern is continued in the subsequent Innerworld Affairs sequence ...
Crampton, Patricia
(1925-2016) Indian-born translator, in UK from 1930. As chair of the Translators Association, she contributed importantly to the argument that translators were essential contributors to the world of literature in general, and that in specific they should not be asked to work for flat rates, without hope of royalties, or of sharing revenues from the PLR (Public Lending Right) after it was created in the UK in 1979. After working as a translator in 1947 at the Nuremberg trials of Germans accused ...
Heinlein, Robert A
(1907-1988) US author, educated at the University of Missouri and the US Naval Academy, Annapolis. After serving as a naval officer for five years, he retired due to ill-health in 1934, studied physics at the University of California Los Angeles for a time, then took a variety of jobs before beginning to publish sf in August 1939 with "Life-Line" for Astounding, a magazine whose Golden Age he would profoundly shape, just as he ...
Peabody, Joel R
(1800-1861) US apothecary and author, whose A World of Wonders; Or, Divers Developments, Showing the Thorough Triumph of Animal Magnetism in New England (1838) comprises a set of clairvoyant visions of Alien life throughout the solar system, including advanced civilizations on the Sun, the Moon, and Jupiter. The concept of alien inhabitants of these venues comes early in ...
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 ...