SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Thursday 12 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: Ansible Editions
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 ...
Berneri, Marie Louise
(1918-1949) Italian-born political activist, editor, journalist and author, mostly in France until early adulthood, from 1937 in the UK. She co-founded in 1939 and edited the anti-war anarchist journal War Commentary until 1945, when she and her co-editors were put on trial for "incitement to disaffection". She is of sf interest for Journey Through Utopia (1950), a cogent historical traversal of significant authors, from Plato to Aldous ...
Adler, Paul
Pseudonym of German-born author and translator Peter Edler (1934- ), in Canada 1953-1960, in the USA 1960-1981, subsequently in Sweden. In his first work in English, The Dooming Eye (1978) under his real name, the eponymous eye grants the usual kind of intrusive powers to those who use it. Much more ambitiously, Saucer Hill (1979) as by Paul Adler, set in a polluted Near Future California (see ...
Swenson, Patrick
(1958- ) US editor, publisher and author, founder of Fairwood Press in 2000, which he continues to run and for which he designed many covers. Somewhat earlier in 1995 he founded and edited the magazine Talebones, which latterly operated through Fairwood. Swenson began to publish work of genre interest with "The Siren" in Marion Zimmer Bradley's Fantasy Magazine for April 1990. His Union of Worlds sequence of interstellar ...
Heldon
French electronic rock band formed in 1974 by Richard Pinhas (1951- ), named after The High Land of Heldon in Norman Spinrad's novel The Iron Dream (1972); originally active until 1979, and reformed with differing line-ups occasionally since. Pinhas has said the band was inspired equally by the events of May 1968 (in which he participated), the works of Gilles Deleuze, and science fiction, especially Philip K Dick (Pinhas ...
Langford, David
(1953- ) UK author, critic, editor, publisher and sf fan, in the latter capacity recipient of 21 Hugo awards for fan writing – some of the best of his several hundred pieces are assembled as Let's Hear It for the Deaf Man (coll 1992 chap US; much exp vt The Silence of the Langford 1996; exp 2015 ebook) as Dave Langford, edited by Ben Yalow – plus five Best Fanzine Hugos ...