SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Monday 31 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 24 August 2026
Sponsor of the day: Andy Richards of Cold Tonnage Books
Hogan, Ernest
(1955- ) US author, married to Lee Hogan, who began publishing sf with "The Rape of Things to Come" in Amazing for March 1982. His first novel, Cortez on Jupiter (1990), uses the subversive tone of Cyberpunk to tell the tale of a countercultural street artist looking for fulfilment, travelling from the usual hyperbolic Near-Future ...
Russell, Ray
(1924-1999) US author, editor and screenwriter whose work (although he wrote several stories for the SF Magazines) was mostly horror, supernatural, Fantasy and Gothic fiction for the Slicks. His first published story was "The Lesser Sin" (1953 Esquire) and his best-known is "Sardonicus" (January 1961 Playboy), assembled with other novellas as ...
Science-Fiction Five-Yearly
US Fanzine (1951-2006), twelve issues, published five-yearly and edited by Lee Hoffman with help since 1971 from a succession of assistant editors, later termed "guest editor-publishers". Science-Fiction Five-Yearly's generally humorous, fannish content included long-running spoof serials by Harlan Ellison (writing as Nalrah Nosille) and Robert Silverberg ...
Dalek I Love You
Shortlived UK electropop band, formed by David Balfe (1958- ) and Alan Gill (?1958- ). The group's peculiar name was a compromise between Balfe's desire to name the band "Dalek" after the Doctor Who villains (see Daleks) and Gill's preference for "Darling I Love You". Their debut album Compass Kumpass (1980) includes an oblique celebration of the Doctor Who universe, "Destiny ...
Purkey, Ruth Angell
(1926-2011) US playwright, two of whose several dramas are of some sf interest. Hangs Over my Head (first performed 1956; in The Best Short Plays of 1955-56, anth 1956) is set just before an increasingly likely World War Three; a cast rehearsing a play, lacking any script to deal with their private and public dramas, accost a Mysterious Stranger in search of a plot (see Luigi ...
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 ...