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Wednesday 11 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 ...
Courtier, S H
Working name of Sidney Hobson Courtier (1904-1974), Australian school-teacher and author who principally wrote crime fiction, often with Australian bush settings and Aboriginal characters. His two sf thrillers for Robert Hale Limited are Into the Silence (1973), in which silence engulfs the Earth and the loss of spoken-word Communication brings chaos; and The Smiling Trip (1975), where a ...
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 ...
Russell, Don
(? - ) US author of an sf Sex novel, The Ultimate Lust (1970). [JC]
Currie, Edwina
(1946- ) UK politician, broadcaster and author, a Conservative member of Parliament 1983-1997, serving as Junior Health Minister 1986-1988. Most of her fiction, including A Parliamentary Affair (1994), is nonfantastic, with the exception of The Ambassador (1999), a not-so-Near Future tale set in 2099 in which the European Community has vastly increased its size and sway, while the USA is dominated by a ...
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 ...