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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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Wallach, Tommy
(1982- ) US author of Young Adult novels whose We All Looked Up (2015) understands a potential Earth-shattering Disaster – a vast Asteroid on collision course with the planet – in terms of the life decisions the four young protagonists of the tale must now face. In Thanks for the Trouble (2016), which is adroitly couched as a college ...
Bloundelle-Burton, John
(1850-1917) UK journalist and author, of whose approximately 60 novels – most of them swashbuckling historical romances set mainly at sea – The Desert Ship: A Story of Adventure by Sea and Land (1894) is of sf interest for the Lost Race elements in the tale: the Spanish galleon discovered stranded in the Colorado Desert is loaded with mysterious ritual Aztec objects. [JC]
Cyberpunk [game]
Role Playing Game (1988). R Talsorian Games (RTG). Designed by Michael Pondsmith. / The original version of Cyberpunk is a quintessential eighties game. Both Cyberpunk 2013 (1988 RTG) designed by Michael Pondsmith and its more popular successor Cyberpunk 2020 (1990 RTG) designed by Michael Pondsmith, set seven years after the first edition, are highly evocative of both 1980s popular culture and such early ...
Johnson, James B
(1944- ) US author who began publishing sf with his first novel, Daystar and Shadow (1981), in which a Post-Holocaust USA is depicted. More interesting, though the voltage of innovation remains low, is Trekmaster (1987), set on a rediscovered colony planet whose inhabitants are divided over the issue of reunion with the Galactic Federation; included are some dynastic romance, a rite of passage and a ...
O'Leary, Patrick
(1952- ) US author whose studiously Equipoisal first novel, Door Number Three (1995), much expands the 1990s American venue of its beginning: a therapist is the inventor of a Time Machine and brings back knowledge of Earth's grim Post-Holocaust Near Future whose main inhabitants seem to be a new race – possibly ...
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 ...