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Saturday 11 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.
Site updated on 7 July 2026
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Besant, Walter
(1836-1901) UK author known primarily for his work outside the sf field; one of the main founders of the Society of Authors in 1884. His early novels were written in collaboration with James Rice (1843-1882); their The Case of Mr Lucraft and Other Tales (coll 1876 2vols) contains several fantasies, including the novella-length "The Case of Mr Lucraft" (27 October-10 November 1875 The World) about a man who leases out his appetite, suffering in exchange his partner's jaded ...
Harte, Bret
Working name of US editor, poet and author Francis Brett Harte (1836-1902), active as a journalist and editor in California from 1857, serving as first editor of the Overland Monthly from July 1868 until he resigned in January 1871; in the UK from 1880. He is best-known for his early poetry, burlesques and fiction, his most familiar story being "The Luck of Roaring Camp" (August 1868 Overland Monthly), a tale with ...
Schneider, John G
(1909-1964) US author whose borderline-sf Satire, The Golden Kazoo (1956), which anatomizes the Madison Avenue nature of the (Near-Future) 1960 presidential election, which he saw as foolishly Computer-dominated. [JC]
Paranoia
Paranoia is common in sf; schizophrenia (which we also cover here, although aware that it is a wholly different condition) is comparatively rare. Both are also discussed in rather a different context under Psychology. / It is obviously necessary to distinguish between sf stories about paranoia (a fairly small group) and sf stories whose implicit attitude is paranoid (an extremely large group); most stories discussed below belong to the latter group. Paranoia ...
Lovegrove, James
(1965- ) UK author who also writes as Jay Amory (note play on his name) and has set crosswords for UK newspapers as Jael; his first novel, The Hope (1990) – set on a vast ocean liner as evocative of the topos of the Ship of Fools as it is of the Generation Starship or the Pocket Universe – is vigorously ...
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 ...