SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Thursday 12 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 ...
Smyth, Clifford
(1866-1943) US editor of the New York Times Book Review 1913-1922, and author of The Gilded Man: A Romance of the Andes (1918), a Lost Race tale featuring the discovery of a living Incan civilization deep Underground beneath the South American Andes, boasting the high Technology necessary to maintain life in this redoubt, the Power Source for ...
Atom, The
A DC Comics Superhero. The original 1940s version of the hero was simply a short man without superpowers who like many of his era decided to fight crime by putting on a colourful costume and punching out evildoers. But when the character was recreated by Gardner F Fox in the 1960s, undoubtedly inspired by the success of another diminutive hero from the 1940s, ...
First Contact
The most common Communications scenario in sf – often but not always Linguistic in nature – involves the meeting of humans with Aliens. These are generally called first-contact stories, and perhaps the best known of them is "First Contact" (May 1945 Astounding) by Murray Leinster. This poses the problem of contact as a puzzle ...
Stockbridge, Grant
A House Name used by Popular Publications, especially in The Spider. Most if not all the Stockbridge stories in The Spider were by Norvell W Page; some were by Emile C Tepperman, Wayne Rogers and Prentice Winchell (1895-1976). It has been suggested that Frank Gruber and Reginald T Maitland also used this ...
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 ...