Karen Kruse Anderson is the widow and sometime co-author of Poul Anderson, and mother-in-law of writer Greg Bear.

She is noted as the first person to use the term filk music in print. She also wrote the first published science fiction haiku (or scifaiku), "Six Haiku" (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, July 1962). She also coined the term sophont to describe the general class of sentient beings and (as Karina of the Far West) is one of the founders of the Society for Creative Anachronism, and has been invested as a member of the Baker Street Irregulars. She is active both in Sherlockian groups and in the Los Angeles Science-Fantasy Society.