SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Saturday 11 July 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 7 July 2026
Sponsor of the day: The Telluride Institute
Kojima, Hideo
(1963- ) Japanese Game designer who began work on Videogames with Penguin Adventure (1986 Konami, MSX) designed by Hiroyuki Fukui, Ryouhei Shogaki, an action game in which the player must bring home a golden apple to cure an ailing penguin princess. Kojima's influence is not, however, especially noticeable in this work. The first game he actually designed was Metal Gear ...
Davis, Margaret
(1951- ) US author of the Mind sequence of Space Operas comprising Mind Light (1993) and Minds Apart (1994), in which a family of interstellar traders interacts with governments, other traders and Aliens. [JC]
Sword and Sorcery
This term – describing a subgenre of Fantasy embracing adventures with swordplay and Magic – seems to have first appeared in a genre-fiction context in 1953 as part of the headline "Sword and Sorcery in the Bronze Age" for a review (13 December 1953 Daily Oklahoman) by Dwight V Swain of L Sprague de Camp's The Tritonian Ring (coll ...
Suk, Sarah
(? - ) Canadian author of Young Adult fiction. She is of sf interest for The Space Between Here & Now (2023), a Time-Travel tale whose young protagonist's shifts to earlier parts of her own life are generated by smell; at one point she inhabits her own mother's Memories. This is taxing. Meet Me at Blue Hour ...
Wank, Elihu S
Pseudonym of UK author A Gordon Jones (? -? ) whose How I Discovered the North Pole [for full title see Checklist below] (1909) is a Parody of Polar expedition narratives, including the use of a prehistoric mammoth (see Lost World; Prehistoric SF) in the role of elephant, and the capture of giant whelks. ...
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 ...