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Friday 10 July 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 7 July 2026
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Tam, Albert
(1972- ) Chinese author, born in Hong Kong, educated at the Universities of London and Bradford, and with a transnational following in the People's Republic of China, Taiwan (the Republic of China), Hong Kong, Singapore and elsewhere in the Chinese diaspora. / He is most lauded for his Cyberpunk Renxing Ruanjian ["Humanoid Software"] series, redolent of the concerns of Masamune ...
Airship Destroyer, The
Film (1909; vt The Aerial Torpedo, 1915). Charles Urban Trading Company. Directed and written by Walter R Booth. The attribution of the story to Jules Verne is false. Cast not given. 11 minutes. Black and white. / The Airship Destroyer, which merits notice as one of the first sf films, translates with some efficiency into visual terms the popular Future War ...
Topping, Keith
(1963- ) UK author, journalist and broadcaster whose fiction output of sf interest consists of ties to the Doctor Who universe, beginning with Doctor Who: The Devil Goblins from Neptune (1997) with Martin Day. His nonfiction, besides collaborations with Day and Paul Cornell, includes the ...
Smith, Wayland
Pseudonym used for his one Scientific Romance by UK engineer and author Victor Bayley (1880-1972); he served in the Royal Engineers during World War One; his career at a high level in the Indian railway system was reflected in much of his adventure fiction, some of which verged on fantasy, and which he signed with his real name. Wayland Smith was a legendary blacksmith in German and Norse mythology; in ...
Hawkins, Willard E
(1887-1970) US editor, author and public speaker who began to publish work of genre interest with "The Dead Man's Tale" for Weird Tales in 1923, and whose Castaways of Plenty (1934 chap; vt Castaways of Plenty: A Parable of our Times 1935 chap) is an anti-capitalist Satire set in the Near Future. He continued to publish stories until 1952, the most notable of these perhaps ...
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 ...