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Thursday 21 May 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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Enjoe Toh
(1972- ) Pen-name and preferred romanization of an unidentified Japanese author, a former physicist and postgraduate mathematician whose literary experiments have made him a liminal figure between Japan's sf community and the rarefied discourses of literary awards (see Postmodernism and SF). Such straddling of categories began with his debut works, of which his first published story was the surreal ...
Carson, Rae
(1973- ) US author, who is married to Charles Coleman Finlay; she began publishing work of genre interest with "First Waltz" in Neo-Opsis Science Fiction Magazine for 2006, almost entirely concentrating on fantasy for the first several years of her career. The Young Adult Fire and Thorns sequence beginning with The Girl of Fire and Thorns ...
Kofoed, Karl
(1942- ) US illustrator, sometimes working as Karl B Kofoed, probably best known for his Galactic Geographic series of illustrated pages done, in great contrast to that journal's customary style, for Heavy Metal; these contain his speculations about future Technology, interstellar travel, Life on Other Worlds, etc. The feature ran in most issues from March 1978 ...
Buntline, Ned
The principal pseudonym of Edward Zane Carroll Judson (circa 1821-1886) [he lied variously about his age], US publisher, entrepreneur, and author primarily of dime novels (see Dime-Novel SF) – perhaps as many as 500 of them – under various names, though mainly as by Buntline, a pseudonym he used most notoriously for Westerns. He remains best known for his transformation of William F Cody (1846-1917) into Buffalo ...
Certificate X!
Letter-size saddle-stapled Cinema magazine. Published by World Distributors, from London despite the company name World Distributors (Manchester) Ltd. No editor named. One issue only, dated January 1965. / This was apparently only the second attempt – after Screen Chills and Macabre Stories – to produce a UK Monster Movies magazine. Leaving little doubt that its ...
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 ...