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Thursday 10 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.
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Perkins, Lucy Fitch
(1865-1937) US author of the loose Twins sequence of tales for older children, beginning with The Dutch Twins (1912). The various tales are linked by the fact that each features twins; there is no other continuity in the series. The only story with sf interest is The Cave Twins (1916), a fairly typical Prehistoric SF narrative whose twin protagonists are responsible for many culture-improving ...
Mesa of Lost Women
Film (1953; vt Attack of the Spider Women). Ron Ormond Productions/Howco Productions, Inc. Executive producer Joy N Houck. Produced by Melvin Gordon. Directed by Ron Ormond and Herbert Tevos. Written by Tevos and Orville H Hampton (uncredited). Cast includes George Barrows, Jackie Coogan, Dolores Fuller (credited as Delores Fuller), Paula Hill (credited as Mary Hill), Robert Knapp, Nico Lek, Chris-Pin Martin, John Martin, Allan Nixon, Tandra Quinn, Angelo Rossitto, Harmon Stevens, ...
Foot, Michael
(1913-2010) UK politician and author, a Labour member of Parliament from 1945 to 1992, and leader of the Labour party from 1980 to 1983; he resigned this position after losing the 1983 election against Margaret Thatcher. Much of his early journalism was written as by Cato, under which name he attacked the British government's appeasement policy towards Nazi Germany; his one fiction of sf interest, ...
Herbert, Edward G
(1869-1938) UK author of Newaera: A Socialist Romance, with a Chapter on Vaccination (1910). This novel describes a socialist Utopia which is founded on an isolated Island, but tragically fails. [JC]
Patchin Review, The
US Amateur Magazine of science-fiction criticism and controversy, edited by Charles Platt from Patchin Place, New York (hence the title). Seven saddle-stitched Digest-sized issues, typically 56pp plus card covers, dated July 1981 to March 1985. / The Patchin Review was intended to address what its editor saw as worrying trends in 1980s sf publishing, in particular the growing ...
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 ...