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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 ...
Ingersoll, Ernest
(1852-1946) US naturalist, journalist – his column, The Natural History Club, appeared weekly from 1900 to 1938 – and author of much nonfiction, plus An Island in the Air: A Story of Singular Adventures in the Mesa Country (1905) a Lost World tale, the Island in question being an enclave hidden on the flat top of a mesa. [JC]
Resident Evil
Videogame (1996; vt Biohazard in Japan). Capcom. Designed by Shinji Mikami. Platforms: PS1 (1996); Saturn, Win (1997); rev GC (2002); rev vt Resident Evil: Deadly Silence NDS (2006); rev Wii (2008). / Resident Evil was not the first game that could be categorized as Survival Horror, but it was the game that codified the form. The gameplay focuses on puzzle ...
Green, Sharon
(1942-2022) US author who came to notice for two almost simultaneous sequences of sadomasochistic novels in the manner of John Norman, with which the advertising copy explicitly linked them: the Jalav/Amazon Warrior sequence, beginning with The Crystals of Mida (1982) and ending with To Battle the Gods (1986), which is set in a fabulated Amazon; and the Terrilian Sequence, beginning with The Warrior Within ...
Stoddard, Jason
(? - ) US author who also writes as by Brett Patton, and who began to publish work of genre interest with "Unfinished" in Strange Horizons for 10 and 17 May 2004. His longer work has been restricted to series, though Winning Mars (2010), with sequels intended, remains technically a singleton; it extrapolates a traditional sf Media Landscape – the privatized ...
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 ...