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Wednesday 11 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.
Site updated on 9 March 2026
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August, Riley
(? - ) US author whose first novel, The Last Gifts of the Universe (2022; rev 2024), traces the hegira of an Archivist through a Space Opera universe nearing the End of Time, in search of relics as well as clues to the fall of so many great civilizations over the aeons: it is hinted that there may be a reason for this (a sequel is expected) (see ...
Hamling, William L
(1921-2017) US author and editor; active as an sf fan in the late 1930s and early 1940s, he published a number of stories, the first of which, "War with Jupiter" with Mark Reinsberg, appeared in Amazing Stories in 1939. Most of his stories were written as William Lawrence Hamling, his full name. Hamling later went to work for Ziff-Davis under Raymond A Palmer, and was managing editor of ...
Journeyman Project, The
Videogame series (from 1993). Presto Studios (PS). Designed by David Flanagan. / The Journeyman Project is a series of linearly plotted graphical Adventure games dealing with Time Travel. Their designs emphasize graphical quality over interactivity, in a similar way to the popular fantasy game Myst (1993 Cyan Worlds, Mac, Win; 1994 Saturn; 1995 3DO, JaguarCD, PS1; ...
Arnott, Jake
(1961- ) UK author and playwright whose first novel was The Long Firm (1999), set in the 1960s UK criminal underworld and adapted in 2004 as an award-winning BBC2 Television series. Of particular sf interest is his sixth novel The House of Rumour (2012), an exploration of cultism, occultism, disinformation and myth-making from World War Two to the end of the twentieth century. ...
Watterson, Bill
(1958- ) US cartoonist and author, known almost exclusively for his influential Comic strip, the Calvin and Hobbes sequence, which debuted on 18 November 1985 and ended (by his decision) on 31 December 1995, with a famous closing panel showing the real boy Calvin and the imaginary tiger Hobbes tobogganing off into an unending sublimity of winter whiteness, an off-frame "magical world, ol' buddy" (see ...
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 ...