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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 ...
Percy, Benjamin
(1979- ) US teacher and author whose first works, focusing intensely on the hard wildness of inland, desert Oregon, had no direct fantastic content, though in some, like "The Woods" (February 2005 Amazing), his first tale of genre interest, that intensity of vision shifted comfortably into the supernatural. His first novel, The Wilding (2011), again with considerable force, conflates the latent violence inherent to an endangered ...
Glass, Mrs Charles Wilder
(1874-? ) US spirit medium and author, whose claim to have co-authored her three novels with a dead doctor whose spirit had been transported to Mars has not been corroborated; these novels, written in the belief that Percival Lowell had demonstrated the existence of canals on Mars, are Ruth's Marriage in Mars: A Scientific Novel (1912), Romance in Starland: A Scientific Novel (1915) and ...
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 ...
Jones, D F
(1918-1981) UK author whose date of birth has been variously given, though the claim that he served as commander in the Royal Navy throughout World War Two suggests the earliest of these; he was variously employed afterwards, beginning to publish sf with the first – and best – volume of his Colossus trilogy, Colossus (1966), effectively filmed as Colossus, the Forbin Project (1969). In both book and film, ...
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 ...