SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Sunday 16 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.
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Crowley, John
(1942-2026) US teacher and author who also worked in documentary films and television for some time beginning in 1966. His sf novels have had a considerable impact on the field, and his fantasies established him as a figure whose work courteously but deeply stretched the boundaries of genre literature. / His first novel, The Deep (1975), is set on a flat discworld resting on a pillar that extends beyond measurement into the circumambient galactic Deep, in which very few stars ...
Warrick, Patricia S
(1925-2023) US academic, most of whose work has concentrated upon the themes explicated in the book version of her PhD thesis, The Cybernetic Imagination in Science Fiction (1980), an impressively thorough study that concentrates on the work of Isaac Asimov, including an analysis of the Encyclopedia Galactica which serves as Hari Seldon's electronic bible in the Foundation series; her analysis is supplemented by ...
Saxton, Josephine
(1935-2023) UK author who began publishing sf with "The Wall" in Science Fantasy #78 for November 1965, and whose first three novels – The Hieros Gamos of Sam and An Smith (1969), Vector for Seven: The Weltanschaung of Mrs Amelia Mortimer and Friends [sic] (1970) and Group Feast (1971) – established her very rapidly as an inventive creator of sf Fabulations. ...
Mois, Joseph
Author, possible pseudonym of Edith Redknap (see Errol Collins); certainly there is no evidence of an actual Joseph Mois. The byline appears on the unremarkable A Spot on the Sun (1954 chap), #3 in the shortlived Fantastic Science Thriller pocketbook series. [DRL/SH]
Wagar, W Warren
(1932-2004) US academic (professor of history since 1971 at the State University of New York at Binghamton, which has since 1991 been Binghamton University) and author. He has published sf – his first story being "Heart's Desire" in Asimov's for July 1984 – but his involvement in the field comes primarily through his many years of work on H G Wells in books like H.G. Wells and the World State (1961), ...
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 ...