SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Friday 13 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.
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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 ...
Elder, Joseph
(?1933- ) US anthologist who edited The Farthest Reaches: 12 Never-Before-Published Tales of Intergalactic Space (anth 1968) and Eros in Orbit: A Collection of All New Science Fiction Stories about Sex (anth 1973) (see Sex). Contributors to The Farthest Reaches were of generally high calibre, including Brian W Aldiss with "The Worm that Flies", Poul ...
Mythology
The relationship of mythology to sf is close and deep, but not always obvious. Part of the confusion stems from the widely held belief that sf is itself a form of latter-day mythology, fulfilling comparable hungers in us. James Blish took issue with this argument, pointing out that myth is usually "static and final in intent and thus entirely contrary to the spirit of sf, which assumes continuous change". We restrict ourselves below to the role of ...
Super-Mystery Comics
US Comic (1940-1949). Ace Magazines. 48 issues. Artists include Walter Davoren, Lou Ferstadt, Maurice Gutwirth, Jim Mooney and Mark Schneider. Script writers include Lou Ferstadt, Cliff Howe and Robert Turner. Initially 68 pages with six or seven long strips and a short text story (plus occasional short strips as filler) per issue; page count eventually reducing to 36 with long strips down to four. / Vol 1 #1 introduces Magno the Magnetic Man (see ...
Empathy
A variant form of Telepathy, the detection or sympathetic experience of feelings and emotions as distinct from thoughts; this occasionally appears in sf as an individual Psi Power or aspect of ESP, as distinct from nonfantastic understanding or fellow-feeling. The term seems first to have been used in fiction in this sf sense in Poul Anderson's No World of Their Own ...
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 ...