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Saturday 11 April 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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True, John Preston
(1859-1933) US author, mostly of historical novels; the eponymous meteor fragment, in The Iron Star and What It Saw On Its Journey through the Ages: From Myth to History (1899), which is written for older children, inspires or is in the vicinity of significant moments in the gradual Evolution of Homo sapiens, a voyage initially depicted in Prehistoric SF terms, later more mundanely. [JC]
Klaatu
Canadian pop band, most famous for their song "Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft", on the album 3:47 EST (1976), which was notably covered by the Carpenters. More interesting is the band's second release, Hope (1977), a concept album about humanity's near-future encounter with the last survivor of the ancient Venusian "Politzanian" empire. After providing a rapid tour of the cosmos (track 3 is called "Around the Universe in Eighty Days") this survivor dies, ...
Gunn, David
(? - ) Author, almost certainly pseudonymous, whose Military SF tale, Death's Head (2007), which is set in anonymous Space Opera country and features an exceedingly tough protagonist, begins the Death's Head sequence. This series appears to have ceased with the third volume, Death's Head: Day of the Damned (2009), despite the author's announcement in 2009 ...
Corley, Edwin
(1931-1981) US author who wrote thrillers as by Patrick Buchanan, Will Collins, David Harper and William Judson; his sf is all under his own name. Siege (1969) resembles several other US novels of the period in its depiction of a Black revolution centred – as in John A Williams's Sons of Darkness, Sons of Light (1969) – on New York. The titular scientific phenomenon of ...
Her
Film (2013). Annapurna Pictures. Written and directed by Spike Jonze. Cast includes Amy Adams, Scarlett Johansson, Matt Letscher, Rooney Mara, Joaquin Phoenix, Chris Pratt and Olivia Wilde. 126 minutes. Colour. / In Near Future Los Angeles (see California), a clement metropolis seemingly full of thirtysomethings absorbed by personal relationships, Theodore (Phoenix) works for BeautifulHandwrittenLetters.com, where he ...
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 ...