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Sunday 14 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.
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Duffy, Maureen
(1933-2026) UK author, active from around 1950, 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 ...
Hubbard, L Ron
(1911-1986) US author in many genres, including sf and fantasy, and subsequent quasi-religious figure whose founding of Dianetics and in 1952 the Church of Scientology led to much controversy, which has continued into the twenty-first century. As a student in the School of Engineering at George Washington University from 1930, he became acquainted with Paul Linebarger (Cordwainer Smith), a ...
Reizenstein, Ludwig von
(1826-1885) German lepidopterist, surveyor and author, in US from 1848, settling in the turbulent milieu of antebellum New Orleans, which is the venue for his first novel, Die Geheimnisse von New-Orleans (1854-1855 Louisiana Staats-Zeitung; slightly rev 1854-1855; trans Steven Rowan as The Mysteries of New Orleans 2002). The novel creates a model for the hauntedness of Louisiana as born deep in the abysmal past of the region, in this case the emergence in ...
Weybright, Victor
(1903-1978) American publisher who co-founded New American Library in 1948 and served for many years as chairman, retiring in 1966. In 1967 he and his stepson, Truman Talley (1925-2013) – who had long served as an editor at NAL – founded Weybright and Talley, which during its brief period of activity published a number of sf novels. [GF]
Froese, Robert
(1945- ) US academic and author whose sf novel, The Hour of Blue (1990), presents the strangely consoling notion that Gaia herself is beginning to respond defensively to humanity's rape of the planet, and that the (surviving) forests in Maine (Froese himself teaches at the University of Maine, Machias) are protectively transforming themselves. [JC]
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 ...