SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Monday 9 February 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 9 February 2026
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Carver, Jeffrey A
(1949-2026) US author who began publishing sf with "... Of No Return" in Fiction Magazine for 1974. His first novel, Seas of Ernathe (1976), which serves as an introduction to the loose Star Rigger sequence of Space Operas, showed early signs of a love of plot and thematic complexity which would take him some time, and several novels, to control. The continuation, Star Rigger's Way (1978), for instance, combines quest ...
Sussmann, Susana
(1972- ) Venezuelan physicist, metrologist, quality auditor, editor and author of fantasy, horror and science fiction short stories, her first genre publication being "La esperanza es lo último que se pierde" ["Hope is the Last Thing to Go"] (in Visiones 2000, anth 2000). She is best known as editor of the international Webzine Crónicas de la Forja (launched in 2006), webmaster of ...
Space Detective
US Comic (1951-1952). Four issues. Avon Periodicals, Inc (see Avon Comics). Artists include Tex Blaisdell, Gene Fawcette, Joe Orlando and Wally Wood. Writers of scripts include Walter Gibson. Each issue has four comic strips, plus one or two short text stories (except #2). / Wealthy young philanthropist Rod Hathway's hobby is "relieving the miseries of the poor", but he also has a secret identity: ...
Vlahos, Len
(? - ) US rock musician, bookseller and author of Young Adult tales, initially nonfantastic. He is of sf interest for his fourth novel, Hard Wired (2020), the first-person confession of an AI from the point "he" becomes aware of his nature at the age of ten; after running through his invented past, he more or less takes over the Internet, applying his vast ...
Atherton, Gertrude
(1857-1948) US author, biographer and historian. In a long career that extended from 1882 to 1946 she published about 50 books in a multitude of genres, beginning to publish work of genre interest with "The Caves of Death" for San Francisco News Letter in 1886; her first novel was an occult romance involving metempsychosis, What Dreams May Come: A Romance (1888) as by Frank Lin (see Reincarnation). In ...
Nicholls, Peter
(1939-2018) Australian editor and author, primarily a critic and historian of sf through his creation and editing of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction [see below]; resident in the UK 1970-1988, in Australia from 1988; worked as an academic in English literature (1962-1968, 1971-1977), scripted television documentaries, was a Harkness Fellow in Film-making (1968-1970) in the USA, worked as a publisher's editor (1982-1983), often broadcast film and book reviews on BBC Radio from 1974 and ...