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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 ...
Wallis, Redmond
(1933- ) New Zealand author active from the early 1960s whose Young Adult Triangulum sequence comprising Starbloom (1989) and The Mills of Space (1989) faces its young protagonists with Space Opera challenges, as an Alien civilization threatens Earth with a deadly Drug. [JC]
Flying Disc Man from Mars
US Serial Film (1950; cut vt Missile Monsters 1958). Republic Studios. Produced by Franklin Andreon. Directed by Fred C Brannon. Screenplay by Ronald Davidson. Cast includes Lois Collier, James Craven, Gegory Gaye (credited as Gregory Gay) and Walter Reed. Serial version in twelve instalments, total 167 minutes. Feature version 75 minutes. Black and white. / Pilot Kent Fowler (Reed), armed with an experimental ...
Rice, Christopher
(1978- ) US author, son of Anne Rice, most of whose work has been fantasy and supernatural horror; some is in collaboration with his mother, with whom he continued her standalone The Mummy; Or, Ramses the Damned (1989) as the series Ramses the Damned [see Checklist below]. / He is of sf interest for the Burning Girl sequence beginning with Bone Music (2018), much of it reads like the considerably ...
Fisher, Samuel
(? - ) UK author whose first novel, Wivenhoe (2022), posits a 2022 uncannily similar to the real world, but arguably an Alternate History with no discernible Jonbar Point: snow begins to fall on the village of Wivenhoe and never stops, which may be a different kind of Climate Change, or Entropy. It seems the ...
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 ...