SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Monday 16 March 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 16 March 2026
Sponsor of the day: The League of Fan Funds
Dietz, William C
(1945-2026) US author who began to publish sf with War World (1986; vt Galactic Bounty 1997), the first volume of his Sam McCade sequence of sf adventures about an interstellar bounty hunter, which continued with Imperial Bounty (1988) and two further titles. The galactic venue of the series exhibits some interesting kinks, and McCade himself gradually gains individuality. Although the angle of approach differs – the protagonist this time ...
Johnson, E A
(1860-1944) US author, who may have changed his middle name from Austin to Augustus after gaining his freedom (Austin probably being the name of his owner); in his little-known Utopia, Light Ahead for the Negro (1904), set a century hence, the South is segregated in favour of Blacks. Johnson, who was African American, also wrote histories of Black life in America, and a work of Anthropology, ...
Hoch, Edward D
(1930-2008) US author best known for his crime novels and stories; his first story, "Village of the Dead" in Famous Detective Stories for December 1955, introduces Simon Ark, an Occult Detective [see The Encyclopedia of Fantasy under links below] who claims to be a 2000-year-old Coptic priest. Some of these stories are collected in The Judges of Hades and Other Simon Ark Stories (coll 1971), ...
Bradford, K Tempest
Main pseudonym of unidentified teacher, blogger and author (1978- ), who also writes as by Kim Bradford and Finley T Larkin. As Larkin, she began to publish work of genre interest with "Elf Aware" in The Cafe Irreal for August 2002, most of her subsequent fiction being fantasy. In 2020 she shared a special Locus Award with Nisi Shawl (whom see) and Cynthia Ward for the online writing classes and workshops still continuing as ...
Candler, Edmund
(1874-1926) UK travel journalist, professor of English (in Darjeeling, India) and author, mostly on Indian subjects from a point of view unfriendly to Indian aspirations; during an 1888 expedition to Lhasa, Tibet, he lost a hand during a dispute, an experience incorporated into his The Unveiling of Lasa (1905). His sf novel, The Dinosaur's Egg (1925), makes explicit references to Don Quixote in its description of an obsessed explorer, who discovers ...
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 ...