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Wednesday 18 February 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 16 February 2026
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Klein, Gérard
(1937- ) French anthologist, critic, editor and author; an economist by profession, Klein is one of the few continental-European sf writers known in the USA. He has used the pseudonyms Gilles d'Argyre (most frequently) and Mark Starr; and, jointly with Patrice Rondard and Richard Chomet, François Pagery (based on the collaborators' first names, PAtrice plus GErard plus RIchard). His first stories, heavily influenced by Ray ...
Raynor, William
(1920-1994) US screenwriter and author of Freeze (1988) with Myles Wilder, a thriller in which Medicine and Cryonics mix ominously. Raynor also wrote the screenplays for Phantom from Space (1953), Killers from Space (1954; vt Aliens from Space) and ...
Broom Lynne, James
(1916-1995) UK painter, designer, illustrator, teacher and author, sometimes using the original hyphenated form of his surname, Broom-Lynne; he also wrote as by James Quartermain. Almost all his fiction is nonfantastic, with the exception of Drag Hunt (1969), set in a Satirized Dystopian Near Future where violence is encouraged as a social pacifier, and – as in other sf extrapolations ...
Filk
One of the more enduring coinages of Fan Language, this is the short form of "filksong", which in turn originated from the obvious typo in an early-1950s Fanzine article, "The Influence of Science Fiction on Modern American Filk Music" by Lee Jacobs (intended for the APA SAPS, the Spectator Amateur Press Society, but not actually published there owing to bawdy content). The first ...
Electric Velocipede
US Amateur Magazine normally published twice yearly from Fall 2001, by Spilt Milk Press, Somerset, New Jersey, and edited by John Klima. It began paying contributors a token fee from issue #10 (Spring 2006), thus technically making it a Semiprozine, though it won the Hugo award for Best Fanzine in 2009. Until the double issue #21/22 (Fall 2010) it was available in print ...
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 ...