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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 ...
Jacobi, Carl
(1908-1997) US author; also editor of several journals, including the Minnesota Quarterly, who began publishing work of genre interest with "Mive" in The Minnesota Quarterly for Fall 1928. His insinuatingly evocative short fiction is mainly of horror and fantasy interest, much of it appearing in Weird Tales, though he also produced some sf, mostly Space Opera, and some of his stories invoke enough arcane ...
Lovesey, Andrew
(1941- ) UK biochemist and author, brother of Peter Lovesey (see Peter Lear), whose The Half-Angels (1975) is Equipoisal between sf and fantasy in its protagonist's discovery that the illustrations in a Book encode a passage or gateway into another Dimension, where the action focuses. [JC]
Austin, Mary
(1868-1934) US critic, poet, playwright and author of fiction and nonfiction, including studies of the natural world of the American South-West like The Land of Little Rain (1903), and Taos Pueblo (graph 1930) with photographs by Ansel Adams (1902-1984). Her involvement with Native American life and arts was intensified by Feminist arguments that women were similarly oppressed (see Race in SF; ...
Auden, W H
Working name of Wystan Hugh Auden (1907-1973), UK poet, playwright, librettist and critic, a US citizen from 1946; he was Oxford Professor of Poetry 1956-1961. His verse combined wide-ranging technical brilliance with an early fascination for modern Technology, especially that associated with mining and Transportation: aviation is sinisterly glamourized in "Journal of an Airman" (in The Orators, coll 1932) (see ...
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 ...