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Tuesday 9 June 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 8 June 2026
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Duffy, Maureen
(1933-2026) UK author, active from around 1950, several of whose books focused on London, including Capital (1975), a complex set of era-switching meditations – including a Neanderthal man's thoughts about the future – on the deep mythos of the city. The novel influenced Michael Moorcock's Mother London (1988) (as the author acknowledged clearly), and similar later works by Iain ...
Ajor
Pseudonym of New Zealand author John Petrie (? - ), of whom nothing is known beyond his publication of The Secret of Mount Cook: a Myth of South Westland, New Zealand (1894 chap), an adventure story featuring a kind of Time Travel via Suspended Animation, with a frozen body in an Underground cavern within ...
Five
Film (1951). Columbia. Produced, written and directed by Arch Oboler. Cast includes James Anderson, Susan Douglas, Charles Lampkin, Earl Lee and William Phipps. 93 minutes, cut to 89 minutes (UK). Black and white. / The first "after the bomb" Post-Holocaust film, Five concerns five US survivors: a mountaineer, a pregnant girl, a token Black, a cashier and an adventurer. This is a gloomy art film with ...
Naylor, Doug
(1955- ) UK scriptwriter and author who with Rob Grant worked for three years as head writers for Spitting Image (1984-1996), a satirical Television series using a combination of puppets and live action, and who jointly wrote the Red Dwarf (1988-current) television series, which weds black Humour and ...
Clare, John
(? - ) Canadian editor and author of a Near Future spoof, The Passionate Invaders (1965), in which, 100 years after the last invasion, a group of Canadians known as the Snainef (i.e. Fenians) invade the United States. [JC]
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 (1966-1967), and later in ...