SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Tuesday 12 May 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 11 May 2026
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Suzuki Kōji
(1957-2026) Japanese author and essayist, largely known in English through the Cinema adaptations of several of his books, the international success of which obscured his wide-ranging domestic output. His horror and Equipoisal fiction proceeded in tandem with a wide array (not listed here) of books on young fatherhood and occasional works on motorcycle travel. He was also the translator of Simon Brett's ...
If
US Digest-size magazine. 175 issues March 1952 to November/December 1974. It was founded by James L Quinn's Quinn Publishing Co. with Paul W Fairman as editor, but Fairman, who had been writing profusely for the Ziff-Davis Amazing Stories and Fantastic Adventures developed If as a copy of those magazines. Sales were poor and ...
Irwin, Robert
(1946-2024) UK academic, mediaevalist, professional juggler (briefly) and author whose work in Arabian studies, of importance in itself, underpins the world envisioned in his first and most famous novel, The Arabian Nightmare (1983; rev 1987), which may be the definitive rendering of its central conceit: a mise en abyme-like dream narrative whose protagonist, upon seeming to awaken, only finds himself passing out of one story through a Portal into a deeper dream [for ...
Lewis, Henry
(? -? ) UK author of The Way Out: The Social Revolution in Retrospect, Viewed from A D 2050 (1932 chap), in which an historian describes the creation of a socialist Utopia from the happy perspective of a peaceful 2050. [JC]
Knye, Cassandra
Joint pseudonym of Thomas M Disch and John T Sladek for a gothic novel, The House that Fear Built (1966); of Sladek alone for another, The Castle and the Key (1967); and – with the variant spelling Cassandra Nye – of Charles Naylor for a third, Steps to the Grotto (1974). The name is also given to an invented psychic described as "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 ...