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 ...
Currey, L W
(1942- ) US specialist bookseller (since 1968) and bibliographer. With David G Hartwell he published SF-I: A Selective Bibliography (1971 chap), writing together as Kilgore Trout; with Hartwell founded (in 1973) and operated Dragon Press, a Small Press publishing books about sf, fantasy and horror; the partnership was dissolved in ...
Croisières Sidérales
French film (1942). Industrie Cinématographique. Directed by André Zwoboda. Written by Pierre Bost and Pierre Guerlais. Cast includes Julien Carette, Jean Marchat and Madeleine Sologne. 90 minutes. Black and white. / The film opens with a scrolled text (in French): "Although the authors took great liberties with the scholar's numbers, particularly concerning the velocities and distances at which the laws of relativity could play, the ...
Gibson, Joe
(1924-2006) US illustrator and author whose involvement in Fandom began a little earlier than the publication of his first work of genre interest, "I Like You, Too –" (October 1948 Thrilling Wonder Stories; 2023 ebook). He also wrote as by John Bridger and Carlton Furth; his illustrations seem to have appeared only in Fanzines. His work, mostly Space Opera, mostly ...
Foster, Alex
(? - ) US editor and author who is of sf interest for his first novel, Circular Motion (2025), a Fabulation set in at least initially in a Near Future London, though a device from the SF Megatext – a near-orbit rapid Transportation system – duly scatters the cast. The sf ...
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 ...