SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Sunday 8 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.
Site updated on 6 February 2026
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Sallis, James
(1944-2026) US musician, poet and author, briefly active in New Worlds during its Michael Moorcock-directed New-Wave phase; he began to publish work of genre interest in this context with "Kazoo" (August 1967 New Worlds) and co-edited the magazine 1968-1969. His clearly acknowledged models in the French avant garde and the gnomic brevity of much of his work ...
Rubens, Michael
(? - ) US author of The Sheriff of Yrnameer (2009), a spoofish Satire of late modern capitalism in a Planetary Romance venue, the eponymous planet, pronounced Your Name Here, being the only unbranded world in human space: for the self-commodification of Homo sapiens has reached something like saturation point. Yrnameer is a pastoral Utopia, ...
dos Santos, Carlos
(1962- ) Teacher and author of, as far as we can establish, the first science fiction novel published in Mozambique. This is A Quinta Dimensão ["The Fifth Dimension"] (2006), published in Portuguese and reissued (again in Portuguese) in 2010. Both editions have coloured illustrations on the covers. This sf romance deals, as the title suggests, with the fifth Dimension. Here it provides a means of travel in an expanding ...
Booth, Walter R
(1869-1938) UK filmmaker; initially a stage magician, Booth met British film pioneer Robert W Paul (1869-1943) and shortly after began directing for his production company, Paul's Animatograph Works. Some early films simply recorded conjuring tricks but others had a narrative element, built round Booth's ability to use his stage-magic skills for special effects in this new medium. He worked for Paul until 1906, then for Charles Urban's (1867-1942) production companies: Charles Urban Trading ...
Jones, Duncan
(1971- ) UK filmmaker, son of David Bowie known in childhood by his middle name Zowie, who worked in advertising and Videogames before his well-received feature debut Moon (2009); this in turn landed him the direction of Hollywood project Source Code (2011), whose own mix of identity puzzles, layered realities, narrative rug-pulls, ...
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 ...