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Thursday 14 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.
Site updated on 11 May 2026
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Suzuki Kōji
(1957-2026) Japanese author and essayist, largely known in English through the Cinema adaptations of several of his books, the international success of which obscured his wide-ranging domestic output. His horror and Equipoisal fiction proceeded in tandem with a wide array (not listed here) of books on young fatherhood and occasional works on motorcycle travel. He was also the translator of Simon Brett's ...
Baker, Henry
(1698-1774) Naturalist and early microscopist, one of the founders of the Society of Arts in 1754; the father-in-law of Daniel Defoe. He was the author of an epic poem, The Universe (1727), the subtitle of which proclaims its intended aim "to restrain the pride of Man". This is something Baker attempts by striving repeatedly for what we might call a Sense of Wonder ("Amazing Thought! What Mortal can conceive!") ...
Vigers, Daphne
(? -? ) UK author, apparently active from the early 1940s until circa 1965, who is of modest sf interest for Atlantis Rising (1944), in which Atlantis is seen sinking in the deep past, and rising again in the future, though perhaps symbolically, through the agency of Britain, whose inhabitants (it is revealed) are direct descendants of escaped Atlanteans. [JC]
Fagan, Jenni
(1977- ) Scottish poet and author whose second novel, The Sunlight Pilgrims (2016), perhaps rather eccentrically applies the topos of Climate Change to explain a very Near-Future planet-wide onslaught of savage cold (see Scientific Errors), though this oddness might be alleviated, given that the tale is set in an isolated community in the north of ...
Kalfař, Jaroslav
(1988- ) Czech-born author, in USA from the age of fifteen. His first novel, Spaceman of Bohemia (2017), initially depicts an abstractly conceived journey through the inner Solar System, narrated with an indifferent hauteur as to any literal understanding of the SF Megatext typical of the Mainstream Writer of SF; but in this case savingly aerated by ...
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 ...