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Friday 9 October 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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Edwards, Malcolm
(1949-2026) UK editor, critic and publisher, educated at Cambridge, where he graduated in anthropology. Active in UK sf Fandom in the 1970s and early 1980s, he published the first complete text of James Blish's "The Science in Science Fiction" (May 1951-May 1952 Science Fiction Quarterly) in his Fanzine Quicksilver #2 in 1971; edited the ...
Horn, Peter
A House Name claimed to have been used in Ziff-Davis magazines by Henry Kuttner once, for "50 Miles Down" (Fantastic Adventures 1940), and by David Vern (see David V Reed) twice, also in 1940. Peter Horn may, however, be a straightforward pseudonym of Vern's. [JC/PN] links / ...
Randall, Marta
(1948- ) Mexican-born editor and author, in US from infancy, who has taught in several sf writing workshops and served in Science Fiction Writers of America as vice-president 1981-1982 and president 1982-1984. She began publishing sf with "Smack Run" in New Worlds 5 (anth 1973 ed Michael Moorcock) as Marta Bergstresser, her then married name, used only on this one occasion. Her stories since then ...
Thurston, Robert
(1936-2021) US author and academic who attended the first Clarion Science Fiction Writers' Workshop in 1968 and began to publish work of genre interest with "Stop Me before I Tell More", in Orbit 9 (anth 1971) edited by Damon Knight, and who was for some years known only for his short work. This is notable more for its examination of individual humans caught in social or sexual extremis ...
Soft SF
This not very precise item of sf Terminology, formed by analogy with Hard SF, is generally applied either to sf that deals with the Soft Sciences or to sf that does not deal with recognizable science at all, but emphasizes human feelings. The contrasting of soft sf with hard sf, though sometimes useful in the study of readership patterns for Genre SF before 1960s or so, is ...
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 ...