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Monday 9 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 ...
Fry, Lena Jane
(? -? ) US author, the larger part of whose Other Worlds [for full title see Checklist] (coll 1905) describes a lightly fictionalized socialist Utopia set on the planet Herschel, named after the composer and astronomer William Herschel (1738-1822), who discovered Uranus; the volume also includes a short story, "The Planet Venus", in which the inhabitants of Venus view Earth through a telescope ...
Spencer, K A
(? - ) US author of Days Gone By (1999), a Time Travel tale whose protagonist, thrust back to 1926 America, makes a life there. [JC]
Kaiser, Henry
(1952- ) US guitarist, a prolific and important figure in improvised music, with a longstanding interest in sf and fantasy. Daniel M Pinkwater provided the text of the title track of The Devil in the Drain (1987), read by Kaiser. Crazy Backwards Alphabet (1987) is a collaboration with cartoonist and Simpsons creator Matt Groening. The Wolf at the Door (2025) ...
Bernobich, Beth
(1959- ) US author, much of her work being romantic fantasy, who also writes as by Claire O'Dell. Typical of this output is the River of Souls sequence beginning with River of Souls (2010 ebook), which in a style evocative of the Planetary Romance carries its protagonist through various parts of the decaying Erythandran Empire, which serves as the fount for continuing adventures. The ...
Robinson, Roger
(1943- ) UK computer programmer, bibliographer and publisher, active in UK Fandom for many years. The Writings of Henry Kenneth Bulmer (1983 chap; rev 1984 chap) is an exhaustive Bibliography of one of the most prolific sf writers, Kenneth Bulmer, and Who's Hugh?: An SF Reader's Guide to Pseudonyms (1987) is similarly exhaustive in its ...