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 ...
Sheffield, Charles
(1935-2002) UK-born physicist and author, permanently in the USA from 1971, married to Nancy Kress from 1998 until his death; he published the first of more than 100 technical papers and science articles in 1962, and the first of 100 or more sf stories, "What Song the Sirens Sang", in Galaxy for April 1977. Much of his short fiction is assembled in Vectors (coll 1979), Hidden Variables (coll 1981), ...
Knight Rider
US tv series (1982-1986). Glen A Larson Productions/Universal Television for NBC-TV. Created by Glen A Larson. Produced by Gino Grimaldi, Tom Greene, Steven E de Souza, Gerald Sandford, Hannah Louise Shearer and Harker Wade. Directors included Bob Ball, George Fenady, Sidney Hayers, Winrich Kolbe, and Jeffrey Hayden. Writers included Burton Armus, de Souza, Janis Herdler, Bruce Lansbury, Larson and Richard Christian ...
Rhode, John
Best known pseudonym of UK author Major Cecil John Charles Street (1884-1964), in active service during World War One who wrote about 145 detective novels (see Crime and Punishment) as by Miles Burton, John Rhode or Cecil Waye. Julian Symons called Rhode the "master of the humdrum" (i.e. puzzle-focused) mystery, not intended as a compliment; another mystery author and critic, H R F ...
Blue Little Bear Ursa Minor Blue
Japanese short animated film (1993). Original title Ginga no Uo Ursa minor Blue. Ai ga areba Daijobu Co. Directed and written by Shigeru Tamura. Voice cast includes Shouhei Ayukawa, Ichirô Nagai and Shinichi Tsuda. 23 minutes. Colour. / On an island observatory (see Astronomy) an old astronomer (Nagai) and his grandson, Yuri (Ayukawa), notice Ursa Minor now has an extra Star. 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 ...