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Friday 13 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.
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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 ...
Jackson, Steve
(1951- ) UK Game designer, author and entrepreneur. With Ian Livingstone, Jackson (who should not be confused with the US Steve Jackson) founded Games Workshop and created the Fighting Fantasy series of Gamebooks, the two most important parts of the UK games industry before ...
McCammon, Robert R
(1952- ) US author, a prolific contributor to various subgenres of nonfantastic horror [none listed below], though inevitably, at points, some of his tales contain elements of the fantastic (see Horror in SF). He is of sf interest for two novels in particular. Swan Song (1987) is set in Post-Holocaust desolation after a nuclear World War Three and ...
Frezza, Robert
(1956- ) US author who began publishing sf with "Max Weber's War" for Amazing, January 1987. The Small Colonial War sequence – comprising A Small Colonial War (1990), Fire in a Faraway Place (1994) and Cain's Land (1996) – replays the Boer War on a colony planet dominated by a Japanese-run interstellar empire, though without Kaffirs. The Imperial Japanese military forces, predictably, ...
Bidmead, Christopher H
(1941- ) UK scriptwriter and novelizer for the Doctor Who enterprise; his titles are Doctor Who: Logopolis (1982), Doctor Who: Castrovalva (1983) and Doctor Who: Frontios (1984). Bidmead was script editor for Doctor Who's 1981-1982 season, succeeding Douglas Adams. [JC/GS]
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 ...