SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Thursday 16 July 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 14 July 2026
Sponsor of the day: Andy Richards of Cold Tonnage Books
Calmadenker, A
Pseudonym of Dutch-born author, born Jacobus Calisch (1863-1926), a resident in the USA apparently from early adulthood; he changed his name to James Howard Calish in 1906. In his The Mania of the Nations on the Planet Mars, and its Terrific Consequences: A Combination of Fun and Wisdom (1915 chap), tantalizingly, the history of Mars – here narrated at length via an access platform sited at the South Pole (see ...
Rich, Simon
(1984- ) US scriptwriter, journalist and author, first known for his work for the Television series Saturday Night Live beginning in 2007. His short stories and sketches, several of which have appeared in the Shouts and Murmurs section of the New Yorker, intensify an initially slick shaggy-dog literalism into an intense, almost elegiac, "wacky" absurdism (see Absurdist SF), his first ...
Dane, Joel
Undisclosed pseudonym for their sf of a presumably US author (? - ), who also writes as by Joel Ross (fantasy) and Joel Naftali (for younger readers), all these aliases specifically linked by the use of the same given name. It is an unconfirmed speculation that the author is in fact Joel Shepherd, whose work, especially his Military SF, bears a reasonable resemblance to work under these ...
Buck Rogers in the 25th Century
1. US Comic strip conceived by John Flint Dille for the National Newspaper Syndicate Inc., written by Philip Francis Nowlan, based on his novel Armageddon 2419 AD (stories August 1928, March 1929 Amazing; fixup 1962). Buck Rogers appeared first in 1929 in daily newspapers, illustrated by Dick Calkins, and ...
Monsterama
Letter-size saddle-stapled Cinema magazine printed on slick paper. Published by Fantagraphics Books. Edited by Forrest J Ackerman. Two numbered issues, each dated on contents page though not cover: Spring [March] 1991 and Spring [February] 1992. / This short-lived effort by Forrest J Ackerman was his second attempt to return to Media Magazine ...
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 ...