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Wednesday 18 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 18 February 2026
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MacLean, Katherine
(1925-2019) US author who took a BA from Barnard College, New York, did postgraduate study in psychology, became a quality-control lab technician in a food factory, and subsequently served as a college lecturer in creative writing and literature. Much of MacLean's output consisted of short stories, most of which, including her first, "Defense Mechanism" in October 1949, appeared in Astounding; as in much of her later work, Psi Powers are ...
Schreiner, Olive
(1855-1920) South African social theorist and author who remains best known for her first novel, The Story of an African Farm (1883) as by Ralph Iron, which casts a clear unfavourable light on the role of Religion in cementing Imperialist claims to ethical superiority over conquered civilizations. Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland (1897), with its reportedly censured frontispiece showing a lynched black ...
Omni
US heavily illustrated popular-science Slick magazine which included fiction; letter-size format, published by Omni Publications International, New York, October 1978 to Winter 1995, 200 issues, monthly (though February/March 1993 issue combined) to April 1995 and quarterly for two final issues, Fall and Winter 2005. Editors: Frank Kendig, October 1978 to December 1979, Ben Bova, January 1980 to September 1981, Dick Teresi, October 1981 ...
Barthelme, Donald
(1931-1989) US author known primarily as a surrealist and black humorist. Most of his short fiction and at least three of his four novels can be described as Fabulations (see also Absurdist SF): Snow White (1967), an absurdist dissection of the fairy tale; The Dead Father (1975), in which the giant figure of a moribund Father is escorted with trauma and ritual to its final resting place; and ...
McCullough, Kelly
(1967- ) US author who began publishing work of genre interest with "WebMage" in Weird Tales for Fall 1999, a tale which was expanded into Webmage (2006), the first of the Equipoisal WebMage sequence which continues with Cybermancy (2007), CodeSpell (2008) and MythOS (2009). The sequence – set in a kind of ...
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 ...