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Sunday 12 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.
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Keene, Day
Pseudonym of US author Gunnar Hjerstedt (1904-1969), mostly of detective novels and film and television scripts. In his sf novel, World without Women (1960) with Leonard Pruyn, the few remaining women find themselves in Dystopian circumstances (see Women in SF), though it is (unusually) the men who are most often punished for violating scarcity taboos. [JC]
Lee, Jody A
(1958- ) American artist. After graduating from San Francisco's Academy of Art College in 1980, she relocated to New York City to pursue a career as a professional artist. She was soon painting a number of book covers for DAW Books, including books by Mercedes Lackey and Jo Clayton, two authors she has long been associated with. Indeed, she was especially well suited to ...
Hyde, Mark Powell
(1881-1952) US author in whose Young Adult novel, The Strange Inventor: A Curious Adventure Story (1927), Merlin Time Travels incognito to the twentieth century, where he meets the young protagonist, and amazes him with the engineless car (another of his Inventions) in which he carries him away. The two visit the future, where adventures are had, and the past, ditto. Merlin himself is a ...
Ridley, Frank A
The usual working name of UK politician, freethinker and author Francis Ambrose Ridley (1897-1994), most of whose books were on historical subjects. The Green Machine (1926) as by F H Ridley, though clearly cavalier in its treatment of science – presenting as it does the eponymous bicycle as a Spaceship capable of interplanetary travel – interestingly sends its protagonist to tour a crowded solar system, landing first on ...
Sibson, Francis H
(1899-1972) UK-born journalist and author, in South Africa from 1914 or earlier; most of his work, most of which appeared in the 1920s and 1930s, consisted of technically proficient tales involving aeroplanes or the sea and ships. The Survivors sequence of Scientific Romances comprising The Survivors (1932) and The Stolen Continent (1934) describes first the Near Future volcanic creation of ...
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 ...