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Friday 11 July 2025

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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Friggens, Arthur

(1920-2001) UK author known only for his collaboration with Eric Burgess (whom see for details) on several titles for Robert Hale Limited. [JC]

(1927-2013) US academic (who abandoned his career as a professor of sociology in 1971), actor, playwright and author who remains best known for such acute analyses of Western culture as The Pursuit of Loneliness (1970) and Earthwalk (1974). His How I Saved the World (1985), about nuclear Disaster, reiterates in spoof-thriller guise the lessons urged in his nonfiction; en passant he mocks conspiracy theories, occult ...

Strange Fantasy

One of the many reprint Digest-size magazines published by Sol Cohen's Ultimate Publishing Co; compiled anonymously by Cohen. Six issues, three in 1969 (#8-#10) and three in 1970 (#11-#13). The strange numbering is related to the temporary death in 1969 of Science Fiction Classics after #8, but Strange Fantasy is not simply a variant title of the latter, which began again in 1971 with ...

Cohen, Joshua

(1980- ) US author who after the surreal fantasias assembled as The Quorum (coll 2005) began to publish work of sf interest with "Last Transmission or Man with a Robotic Ermine" in Text: Ur: The New Book of Masks (anth 2006) edited by Forrest Aguirre. In his first published novel, Cadenza for the Schneidermann Violin Concerto (2007), the composer Schneidermann mysteriously disappears from a ...

Johnston, Bryan

(? - ) US screenwriter, producer and author; his sf novel Death Warrant (2022) unveils an homage to Robert Sheckley's The Tenth Victim (full version 1966) through its depiction of a young woman who agrees to be killed on a reality show (see Media Landscape; Television), but without knowing that a ...

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 ...