SF Encyclopedia Home Page
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
Sponsor of the day: Paul Giamatti
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 ...
Dunn, Saul
Pseudonym used by UK author and publisher Philip M Dunn (1946-2007) for the original publication of his books in the UK, though he used his own name for their US release; he was also the director of Pierrot Publishing, a packaging-cum-publishing firm which became insolvent in 1981, owing large sums. Dunn was reported to have moved to India for religious reasons, but eventually returned to England. Releases generated by the company included Brian W Aldiss's ...
Ollivant, Alfred
(1874-1927) UK author who had been a soldier; a riding accident left him crippled (badly for ten years), and – long before the outbreak of World War One – he turned to writing. He remains best-known for his first book, Owd Bob (1898; vt Bob, Son of Battle 1898), about a wise and subtle sheepdog; he is of sf interest for his last book, To-morrow: A Romance of the Future (1927), in which twenty-fourth century ...
Charteris, Leslie
(1907-1993) US author born as Leslie Charles Bowyer Yin in Singapore, educated in the UK; he legally changed his name to Leslie Charteris in 1928, and became a US citizen in 1946. He remains known almost exclusively for the long picaresque crime/thriller sequence featuring Simon Templar alias The Saint. This saga began with the author's second novel Meet the Tiger! (1928; vt The Saint Meets the Tiger 1940), though Charteris experimented with and discarded ...
Van Ash, Cay
(1918-1994) UK academic and author long associated with Sax Rohmer, whose biography, Master of Villainy: A Biography of Sax Rohmer (1972), he wrote with Elizabeth Sax Rohmer. He is of sf interest for a Fu Manchu Sequel by Other Hands series comprising Ten Years Beyond Baker Street: Sherlock Holmes Matches his Wits with the Diabolical Dr Fu Manchu (1984) and The Fires of Fu Manchu ...
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 ...