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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 ...
Stewart, Alex
(1958- ) UK editor and author, whose recent fiction has been as by Sandy Mitchell; he began publishing sf with "Seasons Out of Time" in Interzone for Summer 1982, but was initially most active as an editor. Solo he edited Arrows of Eros: Unearthly Tales of Love and Death (anth 1989); with Neil Gaiman he edited the Shared World anthology, Temps (anth ...
It! the Terror from Beyond Space
Film (1958). Vogue/United Artists. Directed by Edward L Cahn. Written by Jerome Bixby. Cast includes Shawn Smith, Kim Spalding and Marshall Thompson. 69 minutes. Black and white. / In this largely mediocre film there are some good, tense moments. The crew of a Spaceship returning from Mars discover that "something" has stowed away: a Monster which attacks crew ...
Ascher, Maurice
(1873-1965) German author, much of his nonfiction being studies in Judaism and Jewish issues. He is of sf interest for Gulliver's Neue Reise ["Gulliver's New Journey"] (1915), a Fantastic Voyage tale based on Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels (1726; rev 1735), Gulliver in this case being an aviator who makes a crash-landing on an unknown ...
Canavan, Gerry
(? - ) US academic whose doctorate in literature is from Duke University, Durham, North Carolina; Assistant Professor of 20th and 21st Century Literature at Marquette University, Milwaukee,Wisconsin, since 2012. He began to publish criticism of genre interest with "'We Are the Walking Dead': Race, Time, and Survival in Zombie Narrative" (Fall 2010 Extrapolation). With Kim Stanley ...
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 ...