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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 ...
Swerling, Anthony
(1944-2004) UK author of The Cambridge Plague: An Illustrated Fantasia on the Social and Sexual Climate Generated by the Descent of the Plague on a Cambridge of the Future (1971), a Near Future Satire, heavily illustrated by the author, whose premise is amply expounded in its subtitle. [JC]
Mission to Mars
Film (2000). Touchstone Pictures (see The Walt Disney Company). Directed by Brian De Palma. Written by Jim Thomas, John Thomas and Graham Yost from a story by the two Thomases and Lowell Cannon. Cast includes Don Cheadle, Connie Nielsen, Jerry O'Connell, Tim Robbins and Gary Sinise. 109 minutes. Colour. / Pseudo-mystical silliness – which owes not a little to Stanley Kubrick's ...
Brand, Max
Best-known pseudonym of US poet and author Frederick Faust (1892-1944), who from before 1920 used many names and produced innumerable tales and filmscripts in many genres, including the Western classic Destry Rides Again (1930); it was first filmed in 1932, and became famous through the 1939 version, with James Stewart and Marlene Dietrich. The psychic contortions that attend the discovery of a Missing Link in Africa (see ...
Outer Limits Newsletter
US letter-size saddle-stapled photocopied Fanzine printed on low-grade paper. Editor/publisher: Steve Streeter. Eight issues, January 1978 to Autumn 1983. Publication schedule was highly erratic. / This was in effect an unofficial follow-up to The Outer Limits: An Illustrated Review (which see), largely illustrated and written by Streeter alone. The first four issues were black-and-white only; #5 ...
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 ...