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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 ...
Walther, Daniel
(1940-2018) French editor and author who began publishing short stories in 1965, publishing at least 165 tales over the following decades; he proved an eclectic author and easy stylist who could switch from Hard SF to Heroic Fantasy. Mais l'espace ... Mais le temps ["What about Space? What about Time?"] (1972) is a long novella blending space Technology and ...
Andromeda Strain, The
Film (1971). Universal. Directed by Robert Wise. Written by Nelson Gidding, based on The Andromeda Strain (1969) by Michael Crichton. Cast includes Arthur Hill, James Olson, Kate Reid and David Wayne. 130 minutes. Colour. / This film, whose director had in 1951 made the classic sf film The Day the Earth Stood Still, concerns a microscopic ...
Hildick, E W
(1925-2001) UK author, partially resident in the USA from around 1965, prolific author from 1958 of no-nonsense tales for younger children and Young Adult readers, often featuring working-class protagonists and focusing on practical solutions to the problems of living; the late Ghost Squad sequence enjoyably loosens his didactic impulses, retailing a series of conflicts between its young protagonists and the eponymous gang of quasi-criminal ghosts. Books ...
Satō Haruo
(1892-1964) Japanese author and poet, very much part of the mainstream literary establishment, remembered in sf terms for an early experiment in Dystopia and fantasies that prefigured those of dedicated genre authors such as Jūza Unno. Satō was only sixteen when his first work was published, a poem in the literary magazine Myōjō. He soon attained celebrity as a poet and occasional ...
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 ...