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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 ...
Man Beast
Film (1956). Jerry Warren Productions/Associated Producers Inc. Produced by Ralph Brooke and Jerry Warren. Directed by Warren. Written by B Arthur Cassidy. Cast includes George Wells Lewis, Rock Madison (see below), Asa Manor (credited as Virginia Maynor), Tom Maruzzi and George Skaff. 67 minutes. Black and white. / Connie Hayward (Maynor) plans a rescue expedition to search for her missing brother, who vanished in the Himalayas while on a quest for the legendary Abominable Snowman ...
Corpse Vanishes, The
US film (1942; vt The Case of the Missing Brides). Banner Productions. Directed by Wallace Fox. Written by Harvey Gates from a story by Sam Robins and Gerald Schnitzer. Cast includes Tristram Coffin, Bela Lugosi, Frank Moran, Angelo Rossitto, Elizabeth Russell, Minerva Urecal and Luana Walters. 63 minutes. Black and white. / As she says "I do," a bride collapses and is declared dead; the mortuary staff arrive, to be told the body has already ...
Minto, William
(1845-1893) Scottish philosopher, academic, journalist and author whose sf novel, The Crack of Doom: A Novel (August 1885-June 1886 Blackwood's Magazine; 1886 3vols), portentously invokes the Disaster threatened by an approaching Comet to shape, intermittently, an otherwise prosaic (and conspicuously dithery) plot; in the event, the End of the World is averted. This novel should ...
Gould, Steven
(1955- ) US author, married to Laura J Mixon, who began to publish work of genre interest with "The Touch of Their Eyes" in Analog for September 1980, though he only began to attract wide notice with his first novel – the first volume in the Jumper sequence comprising Jumper (1992), Reflex (2004) and Jumper: Griffin's Story (2007), a ...
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 ...