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Friday 11 July 2025
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.
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Lennon, J Robert
(1970- ) US author whose earlier works, though they occasionally imply the fantastic, can be understood in terms of a heated, surreally dense naturalism. In its depiction of a small town transfigured by a domineering entrepreneur, Happyland (cut version July-October 2006 Harper's; 2013 ebook) edges into the Horror inscape of a writer like Jonathan Carroll; Familiar (2012), on the other hand, can be read ...
Hussey, David
(1903-1959) UK author of a Utopia, No Sting, No Honey (1938), set on a South Pacific Island where women, following rigid Eugenic precepts, have transformed themselves into the dominant sex (see Feminism); the society itself is organized like a bee hive. Some of the Club Stories assembled in Fort Carteret (coll of linked stories ...
Murray, Jacqueline
(? - ) UK author of Daughter of Atlantis (1958), describing the life of the daughter of the ruler of Atlantis; she is a Telepath and a healer, and performs good deeds ceaselessly; but soon the time will come when, burdened by the sins of its populace, the Island will sink. [JC]
Ehrmann, Max
(1872-1945) US lawyer and author, most famous for "Desiderata", a prose poem whose copyright was registered by Ehrmann on 3 January 1927 which sets down a range of homilies about living the good life; it was published in various formats (including many 1960s and 1970s posters, and a spoken recitation as "Spock Thoughts" on a 1968 album by Leonard Nimoy) and is often wrongly sourced to a seventeenth-century tombstone inscription or Latin text. Of sf interest is Ehrmann's A Fearsome Riddle ...
Spano, Jr, Charles A
(1948- ) US author known mainly for an early Tie to the Star Trek universe, Spock, Messiah! (1976) with Theodore R Cogswell. He has also written occasional short fiction, not connected to that universe. [JC]
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 ...