SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Tuesday 10 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: Andy Richards of Cold Tonnage Books
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 ...
Zerwick, Chloe
(1923-2018) US editor, artist and author who collaborated with Harrison Brown on The Cassiopeia Affair (1968), in which a message from an Alien civilization – possibly faked – has a potentially transformative effect upon a world at the brink of World War Three. As an artist she worked mostly in glass, her second book, which is nonfiction, being ...
Kneen, Krissy
(1968- ) Australian bookseller, film and television director, screenwriter and author. In An Uncertain Grace (2017) a young woman intensely focused on recreating the night she lost her virginity (see Sex) invents a Virtual Reality immersion device. Her seducer, a teacher who had made questionable use of the power of his position, is forced to wear this suit, and to come to a better understanding of ...
Lindelof, O J S
(1852-1917) US author of A Trip to the North Pole; Or, the Discovery of the Ten Tribes, as Found in the Arctic Ocean (1903), a Lost Race tale in which (as per subtitle) the Lost Tribes of Israel are discovered inhabiting an Archipelago (see also Islands) at the North Pole, where they have become beautiful of countenance and possessed of advanced Technology; ...
Countdown
Film (1967). William Conrad Productions. Directed by Robert Altman. Written by Loren Mandel, based on The Pilgrim Project (1964) by Hank Searls. Cast includes James Caan and Robert Duvall. 101 minutes cut to 73 minutes for UK. Colour. / A year later, Countdown would have looked like a Space Documentary, for it concerns the first landing on the ...
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 ...