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Saturday 14 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 ...
Littell, Philip
(1868-1943) US journalist, playwright and author of This Way Out (1928), a Satire replaying the story of Adam and Eve in modern dress. Woman is intrinsically more frivolous than Man, etc (see Feminism; Women in SF). [JC]
Tomorrow Calling
Short tv film (1993). Channel 4 Television, Parallax Pictures, Tapson Steel Films Productions. Written and directed by Tim Leandro, based on William Gibson's "The Gernsback Continuum" (in Universe 11, anth 1981, ed Terry Carr). Cast includes Don Henderson, Colin Salmon and Toyah Wilcox. Colour. 12 minutes. / Photographer Bill (Salmon) is given the task of photographing modernist buildings of the 1930s to ...
Burnet, W Hodgson
(1873-1933) UK architect and author, whose Parodies include Quite So Stories (coll 1918), which makes mild fun of Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories (coll 1902). In Gullible's Travels in Little-Brit (1920), a giant Gulliver from Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels (1726) (see Great and Small; ...
Phillpotts, Eden
(1862-1960) Indian-born author, in UK from 1865, known mainly for his work outside the sf field (see Mainstream Writers of SF), primarily the Dartmoor series of regional novels; however, his first known publication, "Original Poem" (1880 Thespis), was about a Witches's Sabbath. Over his long career (see Longevity in Writers) he was extremely prolific, publishing about 250 books and plays, ...
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 ...