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Sunday 7 June 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 2 June 2026
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Duffy, Maureen
(1933-2026) UK author several of whose books focused on London, including Capital (1975), a complex set of era-switching meditations – including a Neanderthal man's thoughts about the future – on the deep mythos of the city. The novel influenced Michael Moorcock's Mother London (1988) (as the author acknowledged clearly), and similar later works by Iain ...
Féval, Paul
(1816-1887) French lawyer, editor and author, active from the late 1830s until around 1880; father of Paul Féval fils. He first came to prominence as an extremely prolific author of tales written according to the demands of the feuilleton: short chapters inserted at frequent regular intervals, usually daily or weekly, into newspapers, a demanding format successfully exploited by French authors like Alexandre ...
Maltese, William
Primary pseudonym of US author William J Lambert Jr (1944- ), most of whose work is erotica, some gay, some hetero; two of these are sf: the Tlen series comprising g Five Roads to Tlen (1970) and The Gods of Tlen (1970), both as William J Lambert, III, and Bond-Shattering (2005), the latter being a Space Opera in which relations between species are governed by a compelling aphrodisiac. The ...
Shepherd, Peng
(1986- ) US author who began to publish work of genre interest with "Free Cake" in Weird Lies: Science Fiction, Fantasy and Strange Stories from Liars' League (anth 2013) edited by Katy Darby and Cherry Potts; her first novel, The Book of M (2018), a fabulist tale Equipoisal between sf and fantasy, depicts a Near Future world where humans intermittently lose their shadows, and with ...
Scorpion, The
US Pulp magazine, one issue, April 1939, published by Popular Publications; edited by Ejler and Edith Jakobsson. The Scorpion was in every respect a sequel to The Octopus, only the alias of the villainous protagonist being changed. The sadistic, borderline-sf feature novel, "Satan's Incubator" by Randolph Craig (Norvell W Page), was reprinted by Robert E ...
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 ...