SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Thursday 12 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 ...
Walsh, J M
(1897-1952) Australian-born author, in the UK from 1925, active as an author of short fiction from 1913, beginning to publish novels from 1921; from the mid-1920s he wrote primarily mystery stories, some as by Stephen Maddock or George M White; he wrote some romantic adventures as by Jack Carew, and some of his sf as by H Haverstock Hill. Vandals of the Void (Summer 1931 Wonder Stories Quarterly; 1931) and its sequel, "The Struggle for ...
Gender
Discussion regarding gender has largely focused on women: this encyclopedia has an entry for Women in SF but not one for men. This focus can be partly attributed to the drive of Feminism to explore emancipation from the oppression of men. There have been many Utopian depictions of one gender societies in which women thrive. Though authors also depict worlds in which men dominate, these are usually treated ...
Olukotun, Deji Bryce
(? - ) US lawyer and author whose first novel, Everyone Comes from Belterra: When America Owned the Amazon (2009) as Deji Olukotun, is a nonfantastic tale about the rubber industry set in Brazil. The first volume of Nigerians in Space sequence comprising Nigerians in Space (2014) and After the Flare (2017) is also essentially nonfantastic, though it revolves around an attempt to persuade expatriate Nigerian ...
Credits
In sf Terminology, a credit is a unit of Money. Credits are used widely in tales of the future. [PN]
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 ...