SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Friday 16 October 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 12 October 2026
Sponsor of the day: David Cowhig
Edwards, Malcolm
(1949-2026) UK editor, critic and publisher, educated at Cambridge, where he graduated in anthropology. Active in UK sf Fandom in the 1970s and early 1980s, he published the first complete text of James Blish's "The Science in Science Fiction" (May 1951-May 1952 Science Fiction Quarterly) in his Fanzine Quicksilver #2 in 1971; edited the ...
Magriska, Countess Hélène
Pseudonym of UK romantic novelist Enid Florence Brockies (1911-1943), a singer and actress who turned to writing as Countess Hélène Magriska. Her Ten Poplars (1937) has a science-fictional McGuffin, a mysterious Ray that can be used to restore the health and appearance of those advancing in age (see Rejuvenation). The main thrust of the story is the romantic triangle created by an ...
Gabriel, Peter
(1950- ) UK musician, most famous as a founder-member of the group Genesis. After leaving the band in 1975 he recorded and released four highly regarded solo albums all titled Peter Gabriel (1977, 1978, 1980 and 1982). The albums are differentiated by fans either as "I", "II", "III" and "IV" or, following their cover-art, as Car, Scratch, Melt and Security. The songs, always oblique ...
Balloons
For some six months in 1783 Paris was the Cape Canaveral of the eighteenth century as Parisians watched a succession of extraordinary ascents by hot-air balloons. The first successful manned trip took place on 21 November, as reported by Benjamin Franklin, and it started off a long series of speculations about the conquest of the air, almost certainly the first fictional response being The Aerostatic Spy: Or, Excursions with an Air Balloon by an Aerial Traveller (1785; exp vt ...
Grierson, Francis D
(1888-1972) Irish-born UK soldier, lawyer, journalist and author, in UK from about 1900, in active service during World War One; he is known mostly for detective fiction, much of it assembled in series including the Inspector Slim and Professor Wells sequence and the successor Chief Inspector George Muir and Superintendent Andrew Ash sequences. Grierson began to publish work of genre interest with "The Hall of the Dead" for ...
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 ...