John Sladek

John Thomas Sladek (December 15, 1937 – March 10, 2000)[1] was an American science fiction author, known for his satirical and surreal novels.

Under the pseudonym of "James Vogh", Sladek wrote Arachne Rising, which purports to be a nonfiction account of a thirteenth sign of the zodiac suppressed by the scientific establishment, in an attempt to demonstrate that people will believe anything.

In the 1960s he also co-wrote two pseudonymous novels with his friend Thomas M. Disch, the Gothic The House that Fear Built (1966; as "Cassandra Knye") and the satirical thriller Black Alice (1968; as "Thom Demijohn").

Another of Sladek's notable parodies is of the anti-Stratfordian citation of the hapax legomenon in Love's Labour's Lost "honorificabilitudinitatibus" as an anagram of hi ludi, F. Baconis nati, tuiti orbi, Latin for "these plays, F. Bacon's offspring, are preserved for the world", "proving" that Francis Bacon wrote the play.

Sladek noted that "honorificabilitudinitatibus" was also an anagram for I, B. Ionsonii, uurit [writ] a lift'd batch, thus "proving" that Shakespeare's works were written by Ben Jonson.