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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 ...
Cosmic Speculative Fiction
US downloadable E-Zine originally circulated, by subscription only, as an attachment to an e-mail. It was produced by Edward McFadden and appeared twice yearly from Spring 2004 to Winter 2006, totalling 5 issues, each of between 22-30 pages long, featuring 3 or four stories per issue. A planned print edition of the first issue and a planned omnibus of the first four issues has not eventuated. The third issue (Spring 2005) was produced in conjunction with Padwolf ...
de Beauvoir, Simone
(1908-1986) French author, famous for a wide variety of work, whose only sf novel, Tous les hommes son mortels (1946; trans Leonard M Friedman as All Men Are Mortal 1955), examines the dilemmas of Immortality as experienced by the protagonist of the book, who becomes deathless in the thirteenth century, and retrospectively – from a contemporary point of view – makes a case for regretting his condition. [JC]
Anglin, Norman
(1891-1944) UK poet and playwright who served in World War One; his Near Future play Poison Gas (1928) dramatizes the issue of Poison gas, its use (via Weather Control devices), and hopes of its prevention, a topic much discussed in the years after the War. Tragically, in a strife-torn starvation-prone 1950, a guilt-ridden industrialist fails to ...
Huxley, Julian
(1887-1975) UK biologist, journalist and author, elder brother of Aldous Huxley, in active service during World War One. His first work of sf interest, "Philosophic Ants: A Biologic Fantasy" (read May 1922 to the Heretics Club, Cambridge; 1922 Cornhill Magazine), though constructed as an essay, intriguingly speculates on Ants' radical non-mammalian Perception of ...
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 ...