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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.
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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 ...
Psychohistory
A much-loved item of sf Terminology, coined in Isaac Asimov's very popular sequence Foundation (May 1942-January 1950 Astounding; fixups 1951-1953); it should not be confused with the identical term sometimes used by historians, which refers to the study of the relation of psychological motives to historical process. The attractive but purely ...
Beast with a Million Eyes, The
Film (1955; vt The Beast with 1,000,000 Eyes!). San Mateo Productions, American Releasing Corporation (see American International Pictures). Executive producers: James H Nicholson and Samuel Z Arkoff. Produced by David Kramarsky. Written by Tom Filer. Directed by Kramarsky and Roger Corman (uncredited). Cast includes Paul Birch, Dona Cole, Chester Conklin, Dick Sargent (credited as Richard ...
Atkins, Rev E C
(1855-1949) US minister and author who has sometimes been confused with Bernarr Macfadden, though his story for the latter's journal Physical Culture, "My Bride from the Other World" (?1904 Physical Culture), was ascribed to him not to Macfadden. [MA]
Peck, Bradford
(1853-1935) US businessman – he was President of a department store in Lewiston, Maine – and author of The World a Department Store: A Story of Life under a Cooperative System (1900), a Sleeper Awakes tale written under the influence of Edward Bellamy; the protagonist, revived in 1925, find himself in the great Cooperative City of Maine, a Utopia built in the shape of an ...
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 ...