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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
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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 ...
King Kong [magazine]
UK tabloid-size Cinema magazine. Published by Sportscene Publishers Limited. No editor named. One undated issue 1977. / One of several one-issue publications which capitalized on the remade King Kong (1976), this magazine was primarily a large poster when unfolded. Also included were some articles about the various films featuring the titular creature since the original King Kong (1933); ...
Peck, Richard E
(1936- ) US author and academic and university administrator, an active critic of both literature in general and sf in particular. He began publishing sf with "In Alien Waters" in Venture for November 1969. His sf novel, Final Solution (1973), is an amusing but grim tale in which a US academic is sent fifty years into the future (through Cryonics) to find universities and ...
Whiteson, Leon
(1930-2013) Southern-Rhodesia-born architect, journalist and author, resident variously in UK, USA and Canada. He is of sf interest for Scanners (1980; vt David Cronenberg's Scanners 1981), a Tie novelizing the screenplay of the film Scanners (1980) directed by David Cronenberg. [JC]
Herbert, Benson
(1912-1991) UK editor and author with a master's degree in science who began publishing sf in US magazines with "The World Without" in Wonder Stories for February 1931 and was fairly active in the 1930s. Crisis! – 1992 (October 1935-January/February 1936 Wonder Stories as "The Perfect World"; 1936), with an introduction by M P Shiel, deals with the ominous passage of ...
Clute, John
(1940- ) Canadian critic, editor and author, in the UK from 1969; married to Judith Clute from 1964, partner of Elizabeth Hand since 1996. He began to publish work of genre interest with an sf-tinged poem "Carcajou Lament" in Triquarterly for Winter 1960 [ie Autumn 1959]; he began consistently publishing sf reviews in his "New Fiction" column for the Toronto Star (1966-1967), and later in ...