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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 ...
Bubble E Go! Time Machine Wa Drum-Shiki
["To the Bubble! The Time Machine Is a Washing Machine"] Film (2007 Japan; vt Bubble Fiction: Boom or Bust). Aries, Hoichoi, Tōhō. Directed by Yasuo Baba. Written by Ryōichi Kimizuka. Cast includes Hiroshi Abe, Ryōko Hirosue and Hiroko Yakushimaru. 116 minutes. Colour. / With the yen on the verge of collapse (see Money), the Japanese government identifies the root of its troubles as a piece of fictional legislation in 1990 that ...
Burg, Swan
(? - ) US author, possibly pseudonymous. The three protagonists of his sf novel, The Light of Eden; Or, a Historical Narrative of the Barbarian Age: A Scientific Discovery (1896), are shipwrecked on a mysterious Island near Borneo, where they find a Lost Race whose token leader, a white woman, is imprisoned there. Fortunately, an Airship conveys the four ...
SFWA Forum
Privy journal of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. One of the few publications – perhaps the only one – in the sf world restricted to a designated readership, SFWA Forum is circulated only to "active" and "associate" SFWA members (the terms "active" and "associate" being defined by the rules of that guild). Where the SFWA Bulletin, which is the official public journal of SFWA, maintains a strict ...
Blake, Sarah
(1984- ) US poet and author, active since around 2010 in the former capacity. Her first novel Naamah (2019) tells the story of the Biblical Flood from the viewpoint of Noah's wife; ingenious interpreters of the Bible suggest that a named female, Naamah or Na'amah, the sister of Tubal-Cain (Genesis 4.22), was Noah's wife: that (despite this exegetical palaver) she goes nameless on the Ark may explain some of the redemptive urgency of Blake's tale. ...
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 ...