SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Tuesday 10 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: Andy Richards of Cold Tonnage Books
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 ...
O'Neil, Vincent
(? - ) US author, active from around 2005, who has written detective fiction and horror under his own name. As Henry V O'Neil he is of sf interest for his Military SF series, the Sim War sequence beginning with Glory Main (2012), which begins in fairly typical fashion with its protagonist soldier forced into an extreme situation in a Space Opera frame, as the war with ...
Bell, Madison Smartt
(1957- ) US author, most of whose work has been nonfantastic. His second novel Waiting for the End of the World (1985) is, however, an exercise in intermittently postmodern Fantastika (see Postmodernism and SF); its protagonist, who speaks with the devil, plans to explode a nuclear weapon in New York, but instead of accomplishing this goal achieves a ...
Ruined Earth
Term used in this encyclopedia for the longer-range sf aftermath of Disaster and Holocaust scenarios. First comes the cataclysm, then the Post-Holocaust struggle with a general emphasis on survival and adaptation. If humanity avoids extinction, the details of past technology and the fall of civilization are apt to become increasingly blurred – and often mythologized – with each new ...
Xero
US Fanzine (1960-1963), edited from New York by Dick (Richard) Lupoff and Pat Lupoff. Ten issues at irregular intervals, dated 1960 to May 1963. / Large and attractively produced, with illustrations by Roy G Krenkel, Eddie Jones and others, Xero was particularly well known for its articles on Comics, notably the series ...
Robinson, Roger
(1943- ) UK computer programmer, bibliographer and publisher, active in UK Fandom for many years. The Writings of Henry Kenneth Bulmer (1983 chap; rev 1984 chap) is an exhaustive Bibliography of one of the most prolific sf writers, Kenneth Bulmer, and Who's Hugh?: An SF Reader's Guide to Pseudonyms (1987) is similarly exhaustive in its ...