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Wednesday 11 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 ...
Crosskey, N J
(? - ) UK professional carer and author whose first novel, Poster Boy (2019), confronts its Young Adult cast with a very Near Future Dystopian UK, distinguished from the land of the time of its publication by the mandatory insertion of electronic chips in all citizens, and other typical manifestations of a right-wing surveillance state. The young ...
Chang Shi-Kuo
(1944- ) Chinese author and lecturer in computer science (see Computers), in Taiwan from circa 1949, in the USA from 1966 and a long-standing professor at the University of Pittsburgh. Chang was the founding editor of the academic journals Visual Languages & Computing and Software Engineering & Knowledge Engineering, co-editor of Distance Education Technologies, and effectively ...
Discworld [series]
Bestselling comic Fantasy Series which is central to the popularity of Terry Pratchett (see his entry for further discussion). The Discworld setting is a flat world (see Flat Earth) supported by four elephants standing atop a giant spacegoing turtle, this whole ensemble complicatedly orbited by the local sun and moon. Beginning with broad ...
Compelling Science Fiction
US semi-professional Online Magazine which, unlike most such publications, publishes solely technological Hard SF. It is published by data scientist Joe Stech (in partnership with Flame Tree for issue #15) and edited by Emily Goodin. It began in August 2016 on a quarterly schedule but after ten issues switched to twice yearly. It can be read online or as an ebook. In his first editorial Stech noted that he wanted to publish ...
Clute, John
(1940- ) Canadian critic, editor and author, in the UK from 1969; married to Judith Clute from 1964, partner of Elizabeth Hand since 1996. He began to publish work of genre interest with an sf-tinged poem "Carcajou Lament" in Triquarterly for Winter 1960 [ie Autumn 1959]; he began consistently publishing sf reviews in his "New Fiction" column for the Toronto Star (1966-1967), and later in ...