SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Sunday 9 August 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 3 August 2026
Sponsor of the day: John Howard
Traviss, Karen
(? - ) UK-born soldier, advertising copywriter, journalist and author, in US from the early years of the twenty-first century, who began publishing work of genre interest with "Orchids" in Neverworlds for February 1999, with occasional short work appearing until around 2007. From early in her career, however, she has focused on Series: the non-tie Wess'har Wars sequence comprising ...
Scott, Melissa
(1960- ) US author who began publishing sf with her first novel, The Game Beyond (1984), a Space Opera of some resonance which uses analogies with the Roman Empire – familiar since the early Foundation stories (1951-1953) of Isaac Asimov – with considerable skill (see History in SF). In 1986 she won the ...
Pfeil, Donald J
(1937-1989) US author whose Voyage to a Forgotten Sun (1975), Through the Reality Warp (1976) and Look Back to Earth (1977) as Don Pfeil were Young Adult deliberately (and enjoyably) outmoded Space-Opera idiom. Under the House Name William Arrow he wrote Return to the Planet of the Apes 2: Escape from Terror Lagoon ...
Lee, Thomas D
(? - ) UK academic, specializing in Arthurian studies, and author in whose first novel, Perilous Times (2023), the Once and Future King's brother is awakened into the perilous chaos of Near Future Britain, where fantasy topoi (including dragons; see Supernatural Creatures) and Climate Change markers signal a use of ...
Barker, Nicola
(1966- ) UK author, active from around 1990; her tales are almost exclusively set in the South-East of England, featuring characters who fit all too well into suburban subtopias, except for their tendency to commit mild verbal and physical mayhem on their surroundings. The mundanity of this world normally, in her work, seems shaky but does not normally spill over into the fantastic, though In the Approaches (2014) is partly narrated by a parrot; ...
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 ...