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Sunday 15 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 ...
Williams, Charles
(1886-1945) UK poet, lay theologian and author whose novels are essentially theological Fantasy thrillers; in service but through bad health not in combat during World War One. He was closely associated with C S Lewis and J R R Tolkien as part of the Oxford reading group known as the Inklings. His romantic and obscurely devout use of ...
BEM
A once common item of sf Terminology, being an acronym of Bug-Eyed Monster and referring to the type of Alien creature, usually menacing, which was regularly pictured on the covers of SF Magazines in the 1930s and 1940s. [PN] see also: Monsters. /
Harris, Anne
(1964-2022) US author who also wrote under the pseudonyms Jessica Freely [used for gay erotic romance, not listed below] and Pearl North, and who began publishing work of genre interest with "Change Is A Dog" in Nova Express for Winter 1991. Her first novel, The Nature of Smoke (1996), is a Near Future tale that fairly effectively weaves together Drugs and apprehensions of chaos as the ...
Wellman, Manly Wade
(1903-1986) Portuguese West Africa-born author (1903-1986), in America from the age of six, prolific in both Fantasy and sf, though far more significant for works in the former; he also wrote Westerns – though less frequently than did his brother, Paul I Wellman (1898-1966) – and crime fiction, most of his nonfantastic books appearing between 1947 and 1961. Wellman began to publish work of genre interest with a fantasy, "Back ...
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 ...