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Sunday 15 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 ...
O'Brien, David Wright
(1918-1944) US author whose first story was "Truth is a Plague!" (February 1940 Amazing). A nephew of Farnsworth Wright, he published almost entirely for the Ziff-Davis magazines Amazing Stories and Fantastic Adventures from early 1940; there were about forty stories and novels under his own name plus others under various ...
Battleship
Film (2012). Universal Pictures presents in association with Hasbro a Bluegrass Films and Film 44 production. Directed by Peter Berg. Written by Erich Hoeber and Jon Hoeber. Cast includes Tadanobu Asano, Brooklyn Decker, Taylor Kitsch, Rihanna and Alexander Skarsgård. 131 minutes. Colour. / Toy manufacturer Hasbro here tries to replicate the success of its toys-to-film Transformers franchise by wedding ...
Hillman, Harry W
(1870-1938) US engineer – employed in various capacities by the General Electric Company in Schenectady, New York – and author, most of whose nonfiction described existing, soon-to-exist and possible innovations in the use of electricity. His Utopia, Looking Forward: The Phenomenal Progress of Electricity in 1912 (1906), views with a hearty fictionalizing touch much of the same material. It shares tone and some plot elements with Edward ...
Jacobson, Dan
(1929-2014) South African academic and author, in the UK and the USA from the early 1950s. Moral fervour and a harsh eloquence about his homeland characterize novels like The Trap (1955), his first novel, which long precedes the end of white supremacy in South Africa. Of his many subsequent novels, some are of interest for their explorations in the realms of Fantastika. The Wonder-Worker (1973) intricately transforms its narrator, who ...
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 ...