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
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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 ...
Ballard, Isaac Fowler
(1826-1897) UK tax officer ("supervisor of excise") and author of The Prophetic Future of the Empire of Great Britain: Dedicated to her Royal and Imperial Majesty the Queen (1871 chap), in which the Battle of Dorking scenario is taken to predict a Future History in which Britain triumphs. [JC]
Bond, Sandra
(1969- ) UK author, fan and poet active in Fandom since the late 1980s, initially producing Fanzines as Harry Bond and later becoming an assiduous scholar of fan history. She began to publish work of professional genre interest with "Electric Midnight" in Pioneers & Pathfinders (anth 2019) edited by Jessica Augustsson. Her first novel was The Psychopath Club (2021), a dark comedy whose ...
Green, I G
Pseudonym of US author Ira Greenblatt (? - ), in whose Time Beyond Time (1971) the hero is either killed by lightning or caught in a "time-nexus" and cast into a disease-free Atlantis, where he finds himself immortal and becomes embroiled in many exciting adventures with other characters similarly displaced in time and space. [JC]
Peynado, Brenda
(1985- ) US author who began publishing work of genre interest with "The Tsunami" in Phantom Drift for October 2015; much of her work in short form, which ranges through Magic Realism to fairly straightforward sf, is assembled in The Rock Eaters (coll 2021). The waif biota Aliens who have arrived on Earth, effectively as migrants, in The Kite Maker (29 August 2018 ...
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 ...