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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 ...
Karig, Walter
(1898-1956) US journalist, naval officer and author, a pseudonymous author for many years for the Stratemeyer Syndicate, including three Nancy Drew books as by Carolyn Keene, and various others. War in the Atomic Age? (1946 chap) compresses into very few pages – beginning with a description of World War Three in 1976 – a sequence of superscience duels between the USA and Galaxia, ...
Colomb, Philip Howard
(1831-1899) UK naval officer and author of several works on naval strategy; he was the main author [with a number of colleagues, see Checklist] of The Great War of 189–: A Forecast (2 January-21 May 1891 Black and White as "The Great War of 1892"; dated 1893 but 1892), a highly detailed Future War description of a very wide-flung "Great War" which begins in the Balkans with an attempted assassination, leading to a conflict where Germany ...
GUD Magazine
US downloadable Online Magazine, also published in Semiprozine print form, based in Laconia, New Hampshire, but founded by British author Mike Coombes. It began with an issue #0, Spring 2007 and appeared twice yearly although issue #5 was delayed, dated Winter 2009 but not released until June and after issue #6 (Summer 2010) a server problem led to a lengthy hiatus with issue #7, the last, not appearing until Spring 2016. The ...
Short, Gertrude
(1902-1968) US film actor and author, none of the films she appeared in being sf; of sf interest, however, is her novel, A Visitor from Venus (1949), in which the eponymous visitor, from a Utopian Venus inhabited solely by females, comes to Earth and expresses her shock in Satirical terms at the condition of women on this planet (see Feminism). [JC]
Nicholls, Peter
(1939-2018) Australian editor and author, primarily a critic and historian of sf through his creation and editing of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction [see below]; resident in the UK 1970-1988, in Australia from 1988; worked as an academic in English literature (1962-1968, 1971-1977), scripted television documentaries, was a Harkness Fellow in Film-making (1968-1970) in the USA, worked as a publisher's editor (1982-1983), often broadcast film and book reviews on BBC Radio from 1974 and ...