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Thursday 19 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.
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Thomson, James
Working name of Scottish poet and author James Thompson (1834-1882), best known for "The City of Dreadful Night" (1874 National Reformer as Bysshe Vanolis; 1975 chap), a long narrative poem whose rendering of an apocalyptic City very much like London contains a profusion of images and tropes that prefigure Steampunk and Urban Fantasy (see The ...
Shefner, Vadim
(1915-2002) Russian author known mostly for his poetry (from circa 1940) and mainstream fiction. Two short novels, "Čelovek s pjatio 'Ne'" (1967 Zvezda nr 4; trans Alice Stone Nakhimovsky and Alexander Nakhimovsky as "The Unman") and Devushka u obryva ili Zapiski Kovrigina ["Kovrigin's Chronicles"] (1964 Literature Rossija nrs 39-44, 46; 1970; trans Antonina W Bouis as "Kovrigin's Chronicles"), were published together as ...
Hodgart, Matthew
(1916-1996) UK academic, Professor of English at Sussex University from 1964. His continuation of Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels (1726; rev 1735), A New Voyage to the Country of the Houyhnhnms [for subtitle see Checklist] (1969 chap), is a Satire on the 1960s upheavals in higher education in the UK. [JC] see also: Gulliver. /
Pelton, Guy Cathcart
(1887-1965) Canadian-born author, in the US from 1923; his sf novella, An Atomic Visitor (1946 chap), is about an Alien from Venus who comes to Earth, and leaves. [JC]
J J J
Pseudonym of the unidentified UK author (? - ) of The Blue Shirts (1926), a Near Future political thriller in which the eponymous para-legal cadre attempts to create a Socialist Republic of Great Britain. Several separate Fascist organizations, each known as The Blue Shirts, were founded in or around 1932 in China, Ireland, Portugal; members of the Parti national social chrétien in mid-1930s ...
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 ...