SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Monday 15 December 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.
Site updated on 11 December 2025
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Varley, John
(1947-2025) US author who began to publish work of genre interest with "Picnic on Nearside" in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction for August 1974, and who was soon thought to be the most significant new sf writer of the late 1970s. He was fresh, he was complex, he understood the imaginative implications of transformative developments like cloning (see Clones) and Identity Transfer, many of ...
Rusk, James, Jr
(1925-2003) US author of two unexceptional Space Operas, Space Slaves (1980) and Tug of the Dwarf Star (1980). [JC]
Besant, Walter
(1836-1901) UK author known primarily for his work outside the sf field; one of the main founders of the Society of Authors in 1884. His early novels were written in collaboration with James Rice (1843-1882); their The Case of Mr Lucraft and Other Tales (coll 1876 2vols) contains several fantasies, including the novella-length "The Case of Mr Lucraft" (27 October-10 November 1875 The World) about a man who leases out his appetite, suffering in exchange his partner's jaded ...
Eggleston, Katharine
(1874-? ) US author who according to early records was born Katie M Junkermann (forename also given as Katherine or Katharine, surname sometimes as Junkerman or Jenkerman); married to fringe-science writer Fenwicke L Holmes in 1919. Her Lost World novel is Red O'Rourke's Riches (2 March-20 April 1912 The Cavalier Weekly as by Katherine Eggleston and F H Richardson; 1937), in which an Egyptian colony is discovered in the ...
Slater, Jim
(1929-2015) UK financier and occasional author in whose Young Adult sf novel, The Boy Who Saved Earth (1979), a young Alien visitor uses his Telepathic powers and superior intellect to stave off an Invasion of Earth by bad aliens. [JC]
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 ...