SF Encyclopedia Home Page
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 ...
Mason, Douglas R
(1918-2013) UK junior-school headmaster and prolific author after 1964, both under his own name and as John Rankine (Rankine being his middle name); he was generally silent from about 1980 until his death, though some material was released or re-released in ebook form in 2003. His first story was "Two's Company" as by Rankine in John Carnell's New Writings in SF 1 (1964), and he was soon publishing two to three books a year, focusing under the ...
McQueen, Ronald A
(? - ) UK author known only for several Space Operas written for Robert Hale Limited, beginning with The Cosmic Assassin (1980) [JC]
Lucie-Smith, Edward
(1933- ) Jamaica-born author, poet, art curator/critic and editor, in the UK from 1946, whose most notable genre contribution is his compilation of the important early sf Poetry anthology Holding Your Eight Hands: An Anthology of Science Fiction Verse (anth 1969). Contributors included Brian Aldiss, John Brunner, Robert ...
Donner, Richard
Working name of Richard Donald Schwartzberg (1930-2021), US Television and Cinema director and producer whose early genre or genre-adjacent work for the small screen included directing six episodes of The Twilight Zone (1959-1964) – including the famous "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" (11 October 1963) written by Richard Matheson – ...
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 ...