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Monday 16 March 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.
Site updated on 16 March 2026
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Dietz, William C
(1945-2026) US author who began to publish sf with War World (1986; vt Galactic Bounty 1997), the first volume of his Sam McCade sequence of sf adventures about an interstellar bounty hunter, which continued with Imperial Bounty (1988) and two further titles. The galactic venue of the series exhibits some interesting kinks, and McCade himself gradually gains individuality. Although the angle of approach differs – the protagonist this time ...
Adolph, José B
(1933-2008) Peruvian playwright, author and short story author who worked in multiple genres but had a sizeable science fiction output. His most respected long work of sf is the novel Mañana las ratas ["Tomorrow, the Rats"] (1984). His shorter sf is scattered among anthologies rather than published in unified collections, in part because, although Adolph acknowledged himself an sf author, he insisted in interviews that sf was merely one of the many genres in which he ...
Hunger Games, The: Catching Fire
Film (2013). Lionsgate/Color Force. Directed by Francis Lawrence. Written by Simon Beaufoy and Michael Arndt, based on a novel by Suzanne Collins. Cast includes Liam Hemsworth, Josh Hutcherson, Jennifer Lawrence and Donald Sutherland. 146 minutes. Colour. / Francis Lawrence replaced Gary Ross, the director of The Hunger Games (2012), for the second adaptation of Collins's hugely popular series; ...
Leinster, Murray
Pseudonym – pronounced "Lenster" as in the Irish province of Leinster – under which US author William Fitzgerald Jenkins (1896-1975) was best known in the sf field, and under which he wrote almost all his work in the genre; the exceptions were a few novels as Jenkins [see below] and some stories in magazines, mainly those in the Bud Gregory series as by William Fitzgerald, plus a small number as by Will Jenkins or Will F Jenkins. One of the very few authors of American ...
Van Gennep, Arnold
(1873-1957) Dutch-German anthropologist, sociologist and author, in France from early manhood; he is best known for Les Rites de Passage [for subtitle see Checklist below] (1909; trans Gabrielle L Caffe and Monika B Vizedom as The Rites of Passage 1960), whose breakdown of ceremonies of transition into three phases – separation, liminality and incorporation – has influenced authors of fiction for over a century. Van Gennep is some direct sf interest for ...
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 ...