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Saturday 5 September 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 31 August 2026
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Murray, Will
Working name of US author William Patrick Murray (1953-2026), who showed an interest throughout his career in Superheroes of the Pulp tradition (on which he was a known authority) such as Doc Savage, about which figure he wrote the nonfiction Secrets of Doc Savage (1981 chap). In this context he had been literary agent for Lester Dent's estate since 1979. ...
Saha, Arthur W
(1923-1999) US research chemist and editor, early involved in Fandom as a member of the Futurians. The Year's Best Fantasy Stories sequence, started by Lin Carter in 1975, passed to Saha with The Year's Best Fantasy Stories: #7 (anth 1981), and continued with The Year's Best Fantasy Stories: #8 (anth 1982), The Year's Best Fantasy Stories: #9 (anth 1983), ...
McHugh, Vincent
(1904-1983) US poet, journalist and author whose comic saga Caleb Catlum's America (1936) [for subtitle see Checklist] is about a family of immortals (see Immortality) who amusingly represent the high points of US history in the flesh (the family includes Abe Lincoln and Davy Crockett); elements of a Secret History of the World are undercut by Tall Tale elements [for Fantasies of History and Tall Tale see The Encyclopedia of Fantasy under ...
Cendrars, Blaise
Pseudonym of Swiss-born editor, controversialist, adventurer (though his memoirs contain a great deal of fiction), poet, film maker and author Frédéric-Louis Sauser (1887-1961), in France from around 1910, signing as Blaise Cendrars from 1912; he was in active service during World War One, losing an arm in combat. His career as experimenter, agitator, constantly restless plunger into numerous genres (which he mixed), began before the War, most of ...
Benford, Gregory
(1941- ) US astrophysicist and author; in 1971 he was appointed an Assistant Professor of Physics at the University of California, Irvine, rising to Professor of Plasma Physics and Astrophysics in 1979, a position he held until 2006, when he formally resigned in order to participate in a new bio-tech corporation dedicated to unplumbing the genetic governors of ageing in humans. His first involvement in sf was with Fandom: from May 1955 he edited ...
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 ...