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Monday 16 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 ...
Ciencin, Scott
(1962- ) US author and Comics writer who has published as by Richard Awlinson and as by Nick Baron as well as under his own name. Much of Ciencin's sizeable output is Fantasy, chiefly Ties to Shared World enterprises (such as Forgotten Realms, titles not listed below, where the Awlinson name was used). Tied franchises of direct sf interest to which he ...
Youll, Stephen
(1965- ) British artist, identical twin brother of artist Paul Youll, who is sometimes credited as Steve Youll. The older twin, Stephen studied art with his brother at Durham's New College and Sunderland University, and they initially worked together as cover artists, beginning with a cover for Daniel Keys Moran's Emerald Eyes (1988). Their collaborative works included colourfully busy ...
DeMille, Nelson
(1943-2024) US author of several Technothrillers in collaboration – originally anonymously – with Thomas H Block. The collaboration is made explicit only in the revised version of Block's first book, Mayday (1979; rev 1997 as by Thomas Block and Nelson DeMille). These tales all hover at the edge of genuine sf; of these, two are of particular interest: the ...
Gottlieb, Hinko
(1886-1948) Croatian poet, author, editor and lawyer whose sf novel set in World War Two, The Key to the Great Gate (manuscript trans Fred Bolman and Ruth Morris from the Serbo-Croat 1947), was first composed in an Italian concentration camp (the manuscript was destroyed and had to be reconstructed later). An imprisoned Scientist, having learned how to expand and contract the Einsteinian ...
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 ...