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Wednesday 11 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 ...
Gosse, Edmund
(1849-1928) UK scholar and critic, best known for his initially anonymous autobiography, Father and Son (1907); exceedingly prolific as a reviewer and belletrist for many years. Of sf interest is his novel, The Secret of Narcisse: A Romance (1892), set in the sixteenth century in the French town of Bar-le-Duc, where the protagonist, a sculptor, manufactures (see Inventions) a Robot which much resembles a ...
Perkins, Sheldon
(? - ) US author of a Space Opera, Polaris (1979), in which an interstellar Starship representing the America-dominated United Space Alliance, and commanded by an Earth-first captain, finds itself in need of repairs. A mysterious Big Dumb Object, clearly Alien, is then encountered in deep space. [JC]
Enguídanos Usach, Pascual
(1923-2006) Spanish author, better known by his pseudonym George H White; one of the deans of Spanish sf. He wrote hundreds of Pulp-style novellas: sf, crime, war and Westerns for the Editorial Valenciana publishing house and later for the giant Bruguera. Between 1953 and 1978, he published 96 sf novellas and a handful of short stories as by George H White or Van S Smith. / Enguídanos Usach was the ...
Maurice, Michael
Pseudonym of UK clergyman, teacher and author Conrad Arthur Skinner (1889-1975), whose sf novel Not in Our Stars (1923) can be forgiven its confused science – giant meteorites are supposed to cause perturbations in spacetime, Time Distortions sufficient to reverse its flow for the protagonist – because of the odd intensity of the tale. Awakening in a death cell after a meteor strike, he is executed and then begins to relive his life ...
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 ...