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Saturday 14 March 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 9 March 2026
Sponsor of the day: Paul Giamatti
Ian, Janis
Working name of US musician, singer and songwriter Janis Eddy Fink (1951- ), popular in and appreciative of sf Fandom. With Mike Resnick and (anonymously) Martin H Greenberg she co-edited the Original Anthology Stars: Original Stories Based on the Songs of Janis Ian (anth 2003; exp vt Stars: The Anthology ...
Poland
Most Western sf readers associate Poland principally with the work of Stanisław Lem, whose books, widely published, much appreciated, and thoroughly scrutinized in the West, had a profound impact on the field. Lem still remains an iconic figure both in and out of Poland, while his enormous worldwide popularity more or less directly inspired the interest in the earlier Fantastika (John Clute's ...
Rusk, James, Jr
(1925-2003) US author of two unexceptional Space Operas, Space Slaves (1980) and Tug of the Dwarf Star (1980). [JC]
Lord, Graham
(1943-2015) Southern-Rhodesia-born editor and author, in the UK from about 1960; of his novels, two are of sf interest: God and All His Angels (1976) is a Satire set in a Near Future England which has been turned into a Theme Park, though a grim new government, run by right-wing radicals known as God's Angels, soon takes over; and A Party to Die For (1997) anticipates a ...
Kennedy, James
(1973- ) US software engineer and author whose first novel, The Order of Odd-Fish (2008), is a Young Adult fantasy whose orphan protagonist begins to come of age through a Fantastic Journey through an exorbitant Wonderland expectedly in search of her true nature, which she finds. Kennedy is of interest for his second novel, Dare to Know (2021), in which the ...
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 ...