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Tuesday 9 June 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 8 June 2026
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Duffy, Maureen
(1933-2026) UK author, active from around 1950, several of whose books focused on London, including Capital (1975), a complex set of era-switching meditations – including a Neanderthal man's thoughts about the future – on the deep mythos of the city. The novel influenced Michael Moorcock's Mother London (1988) (as the author acknowledged clearly), and similar later works by Iain ...
Shayol
US Semiprozine, seven issues, irregular, November 1977-1985, small-Bedsheet slick format, published by Flight Unlimited, Kansas City; edited by Pat Cadigan. This was brought out by a partnership of Arnold Fenner (publisher) and Cadigan, now better known as a writer, whose first story, "Death from Exposure", was published in #2 (February 1978) and went on to win a Balrog ...
SLA Industries
Role Playing Game (1993). Nightfall Games. Designed by Dave Allsop. / SLA Industries is a game of satirical ultraviolence, set in a world-spanning City in an alternate Dimension (see Parallel Worlds). This universe is dominated by the eponymous corporation and its ruler, Mr Slayer. Its society is an exaggerated reflection of 1980s Anglo-Saxon ...
Kolney, Fernand
Working name of French author Fernand Pochon de Colnet (1868-1930), well known for his Malthusian approach to the problems of Overpopulation, as expressed in texts like Le Crime d'engendrer ["The Crime of Breeding"] (1909 chap). His sf novel, L'Amour dans cinq mille ans (1908; rev vt L'Amour dans 5000 ans 1928; trans Brian Stableford of rev as Love in 5000 Years ...
Hjortsberg, William
(1941-2017) US screenwriter and author, much of whose work – like his first novel, Alp (1969), or his third, Toro! Toro! Toro! (1974) – hovers Equipoisally between a mildly gonzo Western American Magic Realism and genuine Fabulation. Gray Matters (1971), which is sf, grounds its fantastic episodes in a future Utopia where people are reborn (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 ...