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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 ...
Nott, Kathleen
(1905-1999) UK poet, author and academic, perhaps best known for The Emperor's Clothes (1953), in which she mounted articulate and scathing attacks on the religious pretensions of such writers as T S Eliot (1888-1965) and C S Lewis. Her second novel, The Dry Deluge (1947), which is a Scientific Romance, describes the founding of an Underground ...
Mason, David
Working name of US author Samuel Mason (1924-1974) who began publishing with "Placebo" in Infinity Science Fiction for November 1955; he was married 1956-1962 to Katherine MacLean. Most of his novels – such as his first, Kavin's World (1969), and its sequel in the Kavin sequence, The Return of Kavin (1972) – were routine ...
Dawson, Saranne
Pseudonym of US author Saranne Hoover (1941- ), who has also written as by Pamela Lind; she is the author of one sf romance, Greenfire (1990), under her own name, a Science Fantasy about the female leader of a tribe called upon to breed an heir, with some absent-minded references to Exogamy. From that point, she has written sf only as Saranne Dawson, beginning with The Enchanted Land ...
Brain Dead
Film (1989). Concorde/New Horizons. Directed Adam Simon. Written by Charles Beaumont. Cast includes Patricia Charbonneau, Bud Cort, George Kennedy, Bill Paxton, Nicholas Pryor and Bill Pullman. 81 minutes. Colour. / A neurosurgeon (Pullman) is asked to examine a genius (Cort) who has gone mad and killed his family. The surgeon soon finds that his own Identity is being alarmingly eaten away, with his friends, colleagues ...
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 ...