SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Wednesday 4 October 2023
Welcome to the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Fourth Edition. Some sample entries appear below. Click here for the Introduction; here for the masthead; here for 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 October 2023
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Innes, Michael
Pseudonym used by Scots author and academic J I M Stewart (1906-1994) for his many detective and thriller novels published from 1936 to 1986, often featuring series character John Appleby in various official roles from detective-inspector to Sir John Appleby, Commissioner of Metropolitan Police, and onward through a long, active retirement. Though fantastical and donnishly whimsical, these tales normally keep sf devices at arm's length, as with the distant threat of ...
Sladen, Douglas
(1856-1947) UK academic, poet, editor and author, in Australia 1879-1884, in UK subsequently. Much of his academic and creative life reflected his years in Australia; his anthologies of Australian poetry were influential, and his long advocacy of the poetry of Adam Lindsay Gordon (1833-1870) generated studies, editions, and his only sustained sf novel, Fair Inez: A Romance of Australia (1918), set in the Utopian Australia of 2000-2007 CE, and featuring ...
Powers, Tim
(1952- ) US author properly thought of as fundamentally a writer of fantasy, but who began his publishing career with two sf novels, the first being The Skies Discrowned (1976 as Timothy Powers; rev vt Forsake the Sky 1986 as Tim Powers), a fantasy-tinged adventure much influenced – as Powers stated in his introduction to the revised version – by the work of Rafael Sabatini (1875-1950). The second, Epitaph in Rust ...
Gill, Joe
Working name of Joseph P Gill (1919-2006), highly productive US Comics scriptwriter and colourist who is certainly among the most prolific comics writers of all time and could indeed be in the number-one position; so much of his work appeared without credit that the true figures may never be known. He was first active in the 1940s with Timely Comics, precursor of Marvel Comics, and in the 1950s became strongly associated with ...
Fahy, Christopher
(1937- ) US author whose first works – like The Compost Heap (1970) – convey in mundane contexts a quiet enragedness that can seem scattershot. After his first story with genre content, "Carnival" for Gallery in August 1980 – assembled with much of his short fiction of fantastic interest in Matinee at the Flame (coll 2006) – most of his later work of interest is Horror, though ...
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. His first professional publication was the long sf-tinged poem "Carcajou Lament" (Winter 1960 [ie Autumn 1959] Triquarterly), though he only began consistently publishing sf reviews in his "New Fiction" column for the Toronto Star (1966-1967), and sf ...