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Monday 16 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, Islwyn
(1915-1988) Welsh author who produced two sf novels remembered longer in Italy than in the UK. Dangerous Waters (1952) showed British World War Two heroes defending the realm against a new enemy from Under the Sea off Pembrokeshire, and was one of the better 1950s green-skinned-invader yarns (admittedly, the competition included Kathleen Lindsay's sf as by Nigel Mackenzie). ...
Turk, H C
(1958- ) US photographer, painter and author who began publishing sf with the comic adventure Ether Ore (1987), an Alternate History tale where the world has been transformed by the eponymous Power Source, which makes space travel cheap, and where a female "Hitler" is a force for peace. The exceedingly ambitious Black Body (1989) presents, in terms readable as both sf and ...
DeCandido, Keith R A
(1969- ) US author and book-packager, almost all of whose work has consisted of Ties to various enterprises, including (in chronological order) {Spider-Man}, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-2003), Star Trek, the Resident Evil (2004) film franchise, World of Warcraft (see Online Worlds) and ...
Muir, Ramsay
(1872-1941) UK historian, Liberal politician and theorist, and author, whose mildly fictionalized quasi-Utopia, Robinson the Great: A Political Fantasia [for full title see Checklist] (1929), edges into the Near Future in its descriptions of an English Parliament free of the shackles of party rule. [JC]
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 ...