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Thursday 12 March 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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Vaughn, S K
Pseudonym of an unidentified American (? - ) screenwriter and author of thrillers, whose sf debut under this name is Across the Void (2019), a Space Opera whose protagonist awakens, apparently suffering from Memory Edit or perhaps straightforward trauma, as her NASA-built ship is broken and she is alone, except expectedly for an attendant AI. Her task is ...
Jacobson, Dan
(1929-2014) South African academic and author, in the UK and the USA from the early 1950s. Moral fervour and a harsh eloquence about his homeland characterize novels like The Trap (1955), his first novel, which long precedes the end of white supremacy in South Africa. Of his many subsequent novels, some are of interest for their explorations in the realms of Fantastika. The Wonder-Worker (1973) intricately transforms its narrator, who ...
Manley, R M
(? -? ) US author of a Lost World novel, The Queen of Ecuador (1894), in which a red-headed Englishman discovers an Inca-based civilization in the Vale of Paucartambo, and weds a princess; back in the normal world, his daughter is threatened by a Mad Scientist doctor, but escapes. [JC]
King, Tappan
(1950- ) US editor and author, grandson of Austin Tappan Wright, and married to editor Beth Meacham from 1978; he began publishing solo work of genre interest with "Fearn" in Galaxy for September 1978, and wrote several stories until 1995. With Meacham he wrote Nightshade Book One: Terror, Inc (1976), which is supernatural horror in the Weird Tales ...
Minahan, John
(1933-2002) US author of the John Rawlings sequence of thrillers, the seventh of which, The Great Grave Robbery (1990), turns on the search for a thief who has risen from Suspended Animation (see also Cryonics). [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 (1966-1967), and later in ...