John Clute was born 1940 in Toronto, then lived in Chicago and New York before coming to London in 1969, where he settled. From its first publication in 1979, with founder editor Peter Nicholls, and now online with David Langford, he has edited and written copy for the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction; by 2025 he had contributed over 3,000,000 words to the enterprise. The first three editions of the SFE each won a Hugo, plus other awards. Clute has also received Hugos for the Encyclopedia of Fantasy with Paul Barnett, and for Science Fiction: The Illustrated Encyclopedia, written solo.
Clute's second novel, Appleseed (2001), which is sf, was a New York Times Notable Book for 2002. Much of his nonfiction, mostly consisting of reviews dating from the early 1960s in Canada until now, has been assembled in several volumes, the first being Strokes (1988), which was given a 1989 Readercon Award, the most recent being Sticking to the End (2022). Pardon This Intrusion: Fantastika in the World Storm (2011) contains essays that celebrate the world-facing nature of the modern fantastic. The Darkening Garden (2006) treats terror as a revelation of times to come.
Awards for his work in general include a 1994 Pilgrim, an IAFA award as Distinguished Guest Scholar, and a 2012 Nebula/Solstice and others. He was a Readercon GoH in 1991; and a WorldCon GoH in 2014. His latest publication, The Book Blinders: Annals of Vandalism at the British Library: a Necrology (2024), with 50 of the 115 authors treated here having written at least some sf, has been shortlisted for BSFA and Locus awards.