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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.
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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 ...
Lombardi, Tom
(? - ) US author of a Young Adult novel, My Summer on Earth (2008), in which an Alien named Clint is sent to Earth to persuade another alien, disguised as a film actor whose first name is Clint, to come back home; the tale is spoofish but frequently sharp. [JC]
Rats
Rats, though sometimes cherished as pets (albeit far less frequently than Cats or Dogs) are traditionally unpopular: disliked as household pests and often feared, sometimes to the extent of outright phobia. They feature in the ultimate Torture of Room 101, tailored to the protagonist's greatest dread, in George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949). Rats and their fleas ...
Schindler, Solomon
(1842-1915) German-born rabbi and author, in USA from 1871, strongly liberal in his work as a rabbi; his sf novel is a Utopia, Young West: A Sequel to Edward Bellamy's Celebrated Novel "Looking Backward" (1894), which strongly supports Edward Bellamy's socialist vision of a just future. [JC]
Flint, Homer Eon
(1889-1924) US author (born Homer Eon Flindt) whose first work was as a screenwriter in 1912, with a script for "The Joke That Spread" (there is no evidence the film was made; at least seven more scripts were sold), and whose work appeared mainly in the Frank A Munsey magazines from the teens of the century. His first sf story was "The Planeteer" (9 March 1918 All-Story Weekly); it deals with sexual rivalry and ...
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 ...