SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Tuesday 17 February 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 16 February 2026
Sponsor of the day: Andy Richards of Cold Tonnage Books
Kramer, Kathryn
(1945- ) US academic and author who began publishing work of genre interest with "The New Ice Age" for Chomo-Uri in 1980; her first novel, A Handbook for Visitors from Outer Space (1984), is set in an unspecified but Near Future land – which turns out to be New Jersey – in a state of constant War with an unknown enemy. / Kramer should not be confused with Kathryn ...
O'Leary, Patrick
(1952- ) US author whose studiously Equipoisal first novel, Door Number Three (1995), much expands the 1990s American venue of its beginning: a therapist is the inventor of a Time Machine and brings back knowledge of Earth's grim Post-Holocaust Near Future whose main inhabitants seem to be a new race – possibly ...
Abe Kōbō
Working name of Japanese author Kimifusa Abe (1924-1993), active from 1948 to the year of his death; several of his later novels have been translated into English. Known mainly for his work outside the sf field, like Suna no Onna (1962; trans E Dale Saunders as The Woman in the Dunes 1964), he was deeply influenced by Western models from Franz Kafka to Samuel Beckett (1906-1989); the intensely extreme conditions to which he subjects ...
Malmont, Paul
(1966- ) US copywriter in the advertising industry, Comics writer and author whose Alternate History sequence, the Pulp Heroes sequence, comprising The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril (2006) and The Astounding, the Amazing, and the Unknown (2011), homages the world of Pulp magazines and Superheroes like ...
Way ... Way Out
Film (1966). Coldwater. Directed by Gordon Douglas. Written by William Bowers and László Vadnay. Cast includes Anita Ekberg, Brian Keith, Jerry Lewis, Robert Morley, Howard Morris, Dick Shawn, Connie Stevens and Dennis Weaver. 101 minutes. Colour. / In the future, both the Americans and the Russians maintain two-man meteorological stations on the Moon. Since their current astronauts (Weaver, Morris) are constantly in conflict, the Americans ...
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 ...