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Thursday 12 March 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 9 March 2026
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Thomas, Hugh
(1931-2017) UK historian and author, best known for such studies as The Spanish Civil War (1961; rev 1977). Of his fiction, which came early in his career, his second novel, The Oxygen Age (1958), is of sf interest. In the very Near Future, the British government is convinced by Lord Mortlake, an industrialist and fraudster, that he is responsible for the Invention of the oxygen bomb, and that with ...
Welford, Sue
(1942- ) UK author, in New Zealand from around 2005, almost all of whose work has been for children or Young Adult readers; she began to publish work of genre interest with "Flight for Freedom" in Fantastic Space Stories (anth 1994) edited by Tony Bradman. Her three series [none are listed below] are the Just George sequence for younger readers, and the Charlie Scroggins sequence and the St Jo's Hospital ...
Shared Worlds
Stories and novels written by different hands but sharing a setting are in this encyclopedia called shared-world stories. They are usually (but not always) published as contributions to original-Anthology series, in turn usually (but not always) edited by the creator(s) of the original setting, who also controls the "bible". This "bible" is a set of rules controlling a shared world by defining the roles, actors, venues, genres, plots and significance of any story ...
Amis, Kingsley
(1922-1995) UK author, poet and critic; father of Martin Amis. He took his MA at Oxford, and was a lecturer in English at Swansea 1949-1961 and Fellow of Peterhouse, Cambridge, 1961-1963. Though best known for such social comedies as his first novel, Lucky Jim (1954), which won him the sobriquet "Angry Young Man" (a journalistic catch-phrase of the 1950s, applied to several very different authors including Colin ...
Island of Lost Women
Film (1959). Jaguar Productions/Warner Brothers. Produced by George C Bertholon, Albert J Cohen and Alan Ladd. Directed by Frank Tuttle (credited as Frank W Tuttle). Written by Ray Buffum from a story by Prescott Chaplin. Cast includes June Blair, Diane Jergens, Alan Napier, Jeff Richards, John Smith and Venetia Stevenson. 71 minutes. Black and white. / En route to an international news conference in Melbourne, Victoria, commentator Mark Bradley (Richards) and pilot/friend Joe Walker ...
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 ...