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Friday 13 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 ...
Djerassi, Carl
(1923-2015) Austrian-born Bulgarian chemist, author and playwright, in the US from December 1939; recipient of many scientific awards and honours; best known for his work on oral contraceptives, leading to his being termed the father of the birth control pill (which if not strictly accurate has a substantial core of truth). Four of his five novels and most of his plays centre upon science and Scientists against a real-world background – a subgenre sometimes ...
Connie
US sf Comic strip, written and drawn by Frank Godwin (1889-1959) from its beginnings in 1927 until 1941, when it was terminated after several years of dwindling success. The early years of the strip, which featured throughout the madcap adventures of its eponymous flapper heroine, were relatively mundane, but by the mid-1930s Connie had become involved in Lost-Worlds tales, encounters with ...
McCowan, Archibald
(? -? ) US author whose first novel of interest is Philip Meyer's Scheme: A Story of Trades Unionism (1892) as by Luke A Hedd [ie "look ahead"]; its protagonist, after writing a pamphlet espousing the Utopian socialism of Edward Bellamy in Looking Backward (1888), takes it on himself to unite the workers in the Near Future real world. By ...
Bowman, David
(1957-2012) US author whose first novel, Let the Dog Drive (1992), features gonzo Equipoisal riffs on modern American life, with elements of fantasy, Satire and Californian Magic Realism. While evoking some of the same mix of elements, his second novel, Bunny Modern (1998), is a genuine sf Satire set in New York, in a ...
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 ...