SF Encyclopedia Home Page
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.
Site updated on 9 February 2026
Sponsor of the day: Conversation 2023
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 ...
Sterling, George
(1869-1926) US poet and author whose reputation peaked during the first decade of the twentieth century, partly due to the fervent advocacy of Ambrose Bierce and Jack London; he is now almost entirely forgotten. The title poem of The Testimony of the Suns and Other Poems (coll 1903) is an extended essay in Cosmology whose relegation of Homo sapiens to utter insignificance ...
Island Claws
Film (1980; vt Giant Claws). Produced by Ted Swanson. Directed by Hernan Cardenas. Written by Jack Cowden and Ricou Browning from a story by Hernan Cardenas and Colby Cardenas. Cast includes Dick Callinan, Steve Hanks, Robert Lansing, Jo McDonnell and Barry Nelson. 90 minutes, cut to 82 minutes. Colour. / Reporter Jan Raines (McDonnell) visit a small Island off the Florida coast to report on Dr McNeal (Nelson), who is working to improve crabs as a ...
McDonald, Raymond
Joint pseudonym of Canadian author Raymond Alfred Léger (1884-1934) and Canadian lawyer, politician, inventor and writer Edward Richard McDonald (1871-1952), whose sf novel, The Mad Scientist: A Tale of the Future (1908), features the increasingly dangerous – or effective – interventions of the eponymous Mad Scientist in the dealings of US businessmen and of the US Government itself. The scientist's inclinations are socialist ...
Heroic Age
Japanese animated tv series (2007). Xebec. Directed by Takashi Noto and Toshimasa Suzuki. Produced by Gō Nakanishi, Takatoshi Chino and Takashi Noto. Written by Tow Ubukata. Music by Naoki Satō. Voice cast includes Hiroshi Yazaki and Yui Ishikawa. 26 25-minute episodes. Colour. / In a Far-Future Space Opera setting, the cosmos has been shaped by four "Tribes" summoned by the godlike ...
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 ...