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Tuesday 22 April 2025
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.
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Broderick, Damien
(1944-2025) Australian author, editor and critic; he had a PhD in the semiotics of fiction, science and sf with special reference to the work of Samuel R Delany. He edited four anthologies of Australian sf: The Zeitgeist Machine (anth 1977), Strange Attractors (anth 1985), Matilda at the Speed of Light (anth 1988) and Centaurus: The Best of Australian Science Fiction (anth ...
Ross, Leone
(1969- ) UK author, in Jamaica 1975-1990, who began to publish work of genre interest with "Phonecall to a London Rape Crisis Center" in Burning Words, Flaming Images: Poems and Short Stories by Writers of African Descent (anth 1996) edited by Kadija Sesay. Most of her subsequent fiction has been nonfantastic, though her third novel, This One Sky Day (2021; vt Popisho 2021), set in the imaginary Caribbean ...
Clarke, Covington
Pseudonym of US lawyer and author Homer Clarke Venable (1891-1953), active in the 1920s, who specialized in flying adventures for boys; under his own name, he wrote some adult fiction. Covington Clarke novels of sf interest include Desert Wings (1930) and Mystery Flight of the Q2 (1932), the latter being a Lost Race tale featuring the discovery of a lost civilization of Incas. [JC]
Bray, John Francis
(1809-1897) US author, in the UK 1822-1842; he published several economic tracts, some of them radical, like his first, Labour's Wrongs and Labour's Remedy (1839). Of sf interest is A Voyage from Utopia to Several Unknown Regions of the World: by Yarbfg: Translated from the American (written 1841-1842; 1957), which anticipated William Dean Howells's technique of presenting the views of a visitor from the ...
Gilliland, Alexis A
(1931- ) US cartoonist and author who won Hugos as Best Fan Artist in 1980, 1983, 1984 and 1985; he also won the John W Campbell Award for Best New Writer of 1982. As an official in the US Federal Government 1956-1982, serving mainly as a chemist and specification writer, Gilliland was well situated to spoof bureaucracy, though his first sf sequence – the Rosinante trilogy comprising ...
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 ...