SF Encyclopedia Home Page
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 ...
AD Police Files
Japanese Original Video Animation (1990). Artmic, AIC. Directed by Takamasa Ikegami and Akira Nishimori. Written by Takehito Nakazawa and Kaoru Mizutani. Voice cast includes Toshio Furukawa, Youko Matsuoka, Miina Tominaga and Norio Wakamoto. Three 27-minute episodes. Colour. / This was a spin-off from Bubblegum Crisis (1987-1991), set a few years earlier in 2027 (see Near Future). ...
Dingler, Jay
(1985- ) US author of a Young Adult novel, The Infinite Odyssey (2004), whose young protagonists, after being transported to an Alien planet, get the chance to explore the universe. [JC]
Street & Smith
Important US Magazine publisher, established in the nineteenth century with various dime-novel series like Good News and The Nugget Library, and publishing early juvenile sf in the Tom Edison Jr. and Electric Bob series. The general-fiction The Popular Magazine (1903-1931) published a good few sf stories too. S&S was particularly famous for its Westerns, ...
Flame, The
US Comic (1940-1942). Fox Publications, Inc. 8 issues. Artists include Arturo Cazeneuve, Lou Fine, George Tuska and Chuck Winter. Scriptwriters include Will Eisner and Nathaniel Nitkin. 68 pages, with 6-7 long strips per issue, plus a short text story. / The titular Superhero The Flame had originally appeared in Fox Publications' ...
Nicholls, Peter
(1939-2018) Australian editor and author, primarily a critic and historian of sf through his creation and editing of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction [see below]; resident in the UK 1970-1988, in Australia from 1988; worked as an academic in English literature (1962-1968, 1971-1977), scripted television documentaries, was a Harkness Fellow in Film-making (1968-1970) in the USA, worked as a publisher's editor (1982-1983), often broadcast film and book reviews on BBC Radio from 1974 and ...