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Sunday 12 April 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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Abramov, Aleksandr
(1900-1985) Russian author, screenwriter, theatre critic and journalist who began to publish work of genre interest with Gibel' Shakhmat ["The Death of Chess"] (1926 chap), featuring a Chess-playing Machine that defeats the finest human players. Several decades passed before he returned to sf, invariably in collaboration with his son Sergei Abramov (1944-2024), who is not always credited. The novel-length "Hozhdenie za Tri ...
McCaughrean, Geraldine
(1951- ) UK editor and author, usually for children and for Young Adult readers, though occasionally for a wider readership; most of her work has been fantasy, beginning with A Little Lower Than the Angels (1987), where a young stonemason is seconded by God to serve as an apprentice angel. In A Pack of Lies: Twelve Stories in One (coll of linked stories 1988), a ...
Cussler, Dirk
(1961- ) US finance worker and author, son of Clive Cussler, whose Technothriller series character Dirk Pitt was named for the son. Dirk Cussler began to collaborate with his father on the Dirk Pitt tales of nautical salvage operations (see Under the Sea) with the eighteenth volume, Black Wind (2004), and was co-author for all subsequent ...
Stewart, Fred Mustard
(1932-2007) US author who specialized in psychological Horror novels at the edge of sf and/or fantasy, like The Mephisto Waltz (1969), a story of supernatural Identity Exchange which was filmed as The Mephisto Waltz (1971). Star Child (1974), about an Alien in the Near Future, and ...
Sullivan, Robert
(1953- ) US journalist and author, most of whose work has been nonfiction, much of it associated with Life magazine, where he served as a senior editor for many years. Of sf interest are two spoof "nonfiction" studies, both elaborately arrayed with confabulated documentary evidence about their subject matters. The first, The Flight of the Reindeer: The True Story of Santa Claus and his Christmas Mission (1996), is constructed in part around a ...
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 ...