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Tuesday 22 April 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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Broderick, Damien
(1944-2025) Australian author, editor and critic; he had a PhD in the semiotics of fiction, science and sf with special reference to the work of Samuel R Delany. He edited four anthologies of Australian sf: The Zeitgeist Machine (anth 1977), Strange Attractors (anth 1985), Matilda at the Speed of Light (anth 1988) and Centaurus: The Best of Australian Science Fiction (anth ...
XYZ
Pseudonym of the unidentified UK author (? -? ) of The Vril Staff (1891), an unauthorized Sequel by Other Hands to Edward Bulwer Lytton's The Coming Race (1871), in which vril is the Power Source for a vastly effective Weapon, whose wielder initially eliminates Indians in the ...
Sherburne, Zoa
(1912-1995) US author of much fiction for Young Adult readers, including about 300 stories; an sf novel, The Girl Who Knew Tomorrow (1970), about a young woman whose powers of Precognition alienate her from society. Why Have the Birds Stopped Singing? (1974) is fantasy. [JC]
Buck, Doris Pitkin
(1898-1980) US English instructor and author of short fiction and poetry only, sometimes signing herself Doris P Buck and almost exclusively associated with The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Her first sf publication was "Aunt Agatha" (October 1952 F&SF); she continued to publish stories until 1975 and poems until 1981. No collection has appeared. Buck was a founding member of ...
Belden, David
(1949- ) Swiss-born UK author, in the USA from 1982 for many years, but later again resident in the UK; his Galactic Collectivity sequence – Children of Arable (1986) and To Warm the Earth (1988) – depicts with clearly felt didactic urgency a Far-Future Earth trapped in sterile stasis, with a stagnant galactic civilization impotently observing the dying of the mother planet, though the ...
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 ...