SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Saturday 17 May 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.
Site updated on 16 May 2025
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Fabian, Stephen E
(1930-2025) American artist, sometimes credited as Steve Fabian or simply Fabian. The self-trained Fabian first worked as an electronic engineer, but he began contributing art to Fanzines in the late 1960s and became a full-time professional artist in 1973. He did a number of covers and interior art for SF Magazines, mostly Amazing, Fantastic, and ...
Williams, Missouri
(1992- ) US editor, playwright and author, now in Prague, whose first novel The Doloriad (2022) focuses primarily on a family composed both of survivors of and those born with Mutations after a Near-Future series of planetary Disasters. Incest seems necessary, as they may be the only humans left. But the matriarchal head of the clan sends the protagonist, who was ...
Franson, Robert Wilfred
(? - ) US author of the Overflight sequence beginning with The Shadow of the Ship (1983; rev 2014), set in a universe where interstellar travel is accomplished through a kind of Parallel World desert, by caravans; a disparate group of human-like voyagers trek across this desert – demonstrating the virtues of a communal variety of libertarianism (see ...
Wordmills
The term "wordmill" for a novel-writing Machine was coined by Fritz Leiber in The Silver Eggheads (January 1959 F&SF; exp 1962), though the general concept is much older. When contemplating future innovations in Technology, it is perhaps not surprising that sf writers have regularly hit upon the idea that machinery might someday take over their own profession of ...
Whitnall, Harold O
(1877-1945) US academic and author, whose nonfiction focused on prehistory, with popular studies of early flora and fauna. His Hunter of the Caverns (1939) is a Prehistoric SF tale set in southern France about 30,000 years ago. [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 ...