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Saturday 17 October 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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Edwards, Malcolm
(1949-2026) UK editor, critic and publisher, educated at Cambridge, where he graduated in anthropology. Active in UK sf Fandom in the 1970s and early 1980s, he published the first complete text of James Blish's "The Science in Science Fiction" (May 1951-May 1952 Science Fiction Quarterly) in his Fanzine Quicksilver #2 in 1971; edited the ...
V for Vendetta
1. UK/US Comic-book series (1982-1989), later collected as the Graphic Novel V for Vendetta (graph 1990), scripted by Alan Moore and mostly illustrated by David Lloyd. This groundbreaking series pitted a Guy Fawkes-mask-wearing anarchist hero (the titular "V") against the fascist regime of a Near-Future Dystopian UK, ...
Lyttelton, Thomas
(1744-1779) UK politician, author and poet, best known as a libertine, and for his volatile side-changing in Parliament on the subject of the American colonies, as they began to achieve independence. He is of sf interest for the posthumous Poems, by a Young Nobleman ...; Particularly the State of England, and The once flourishing City of London. In a Letter from an American Traveller, Dated from the Ruinous Portico of St Paul's, in the Year 2199 ... [for full title see Checklist] (coll ...
Cobb, Weldon J
(1849-1922) US businessman and author who specialized in dime novels (see Dime-Novel SF), working mainly in the latter decades of the nineteenth century, though he did collaborate later with Edward Stratemeyer for the Stratemeyer Syndicate on some non-fantastic tales, and the borderline The Boys of the Wireless (1912) as by Frank V Webster (see ...
Reid, Desmond
A House Name used by at least thirty authors for Sexton Blake Library tales, one of which – The World-Shakers! (1960 chap) by Rex Dolphin – was a UFO tale. Another – Caribbean Crisis (1962 chap) by James Cawthorn and Michael Moorcock – was ...
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 ...