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 ...
Peek, Hedley
(1858-1904) UK biscuit manufacturer, sportswriter, publisher and author of Nema and Other Stories (coll 1895), which contains fantasies; and The Chariot of the Flesh (1897), in which a proto-Superman, who has developed the power of Teleportation and has in other ways grown beyond his home in the West, travels to a hidden community of folk known as Aphar in the Himalayas, where he engages in advanced ...
Greenberg, Martin
(1918-2013) US publisher and anthologist, not to be confused with Martin H Greenberg, who was no relation. In 1948 he cofounded with David A Kyle and others Gnome Press, one of the small but important early publishers of Genre SF in hardcover format. Greenberg edited the Adventures in Science Fiction series of five anthologies for Gnome, comprising ...
Amazing Spider-Man, The
1. US tv series (1977-1979). Charles Fries Productions for CBS-TV. Character created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko for Marvel Comics, debuting in Amazing Fantasy #15 (August 1962) and appearing in his own title The Amazing Spider-Man from March 1963. Produced by Robert Jones, Lionel E Siegel, Edward Montagne. Directors included Cliff Bole, Michael Caffey, Don MacDougall. ...
Metzger, Robert A
(1956- ) US electrical engineer, technical journalist and author who began to publish work of genre interest with "An Unfiltered Man" for Aboriginal in September/October 1987, publishing his short fiction almost exclusively with that magazine until it ceased publication in 2001. As a Hard SF writer who has stated he has "the temperament of an engineer", he tends to write stories in which problems are solvable, ...
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 ...