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Wednesday 11 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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Avon Science Fiction Reader
US Digest-size magazine, published by Avon Books, edited by Donald A Wollheim, and – as with its companion series, Avon Fantasy Reader treated by Wollheim as an Anthology series [see his entry, therefore, for list of titles] but by contemporary readers as a Magazine. It had a policy similar to that of its companion, but ...
Samatar, Sofia
(1971- ) US academic and author whose Olondra sequence beginning with A Stranger in Olondria (2013) is a richly and densely imagined fantasy, set mostly in the eponymous empire. The protagonist's irruption into complex world as a trader (see Mysterious Stranger) becomes deep immersion in experiences half veridical, half Memory. This novel won a ...
Meltzoff, Stanley
(1917-2006) US commercial artist who became best known for his paintings of game fish and underwater scenes. He worked in oils, and in the 1950s produced a series of influential paperback sf covers in realistic mode for the Signet imprint of New American Library. These included the 1953 paperbacks of Isaac Asimov's The Currents of Space (October-December 1952 Astounding; 1952) and A ...
Mishima Yukio
Pen name of Kimitake Hiraoka (1925-1970), a controversial Japanese author, playwright and sometime actor. Mishima's domestic output alternated between highbrow literary works and bill-paying potboilers, but only the former have been translated into English; the bulk of his work is non-sf, but as the sales of his literary works declined in the early 1960s, Mishima placed greater emphasis on genre forms (see Equipoise). A recurring though inexplicit subtext in his ...
Rabe, Jean
(1957-2026) US game designer, author and editor who began to publish work of genre interest with "Grandfather's Toys" in Realms of Valor (anth 1993) edited by James Lowder, an anthology tied to the Forgotten Realms Shared World. Much of Rabe's work is tied to other fantasy and supernatural franchises such as Dragonlance and Rogue Angel [see Checklist below]; contributions to the latter sequence appear as by Alex ...
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 ...