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Saturday 14 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 ...
Burks, Arthur J
(1898-1974) US military man and author whose first career was in the American Marine Corps (1917-1927); he re-enlisted in World War Two, retiring as a Lieutenant Colonel. In the meantime, he began to publish for the Pulp magazines, his first work of fantastic interest being "Thus Spake the Prophetess" (November 1924 Weird Tales) as Estil Critchie; his first sf was "Monsters of Moyen" in Astounding for April 1930. ...
Badger, Joseph E, Jr
(1848-1909) US author who began contributing Dime Novels to journals like the New York Weekly and other Beadle & Adams publications from as early as 1870, mostly under his own name or as Harry Hazard; in his Young Adult Lost Race novel, The Lost City (1898), the young protagonist and his professor mentor are carried by Airship in a storm to the Olympic Mountains in the state of ...
Upward, Allen
(1863-1926) UK politician, barrister, poet and author, an advocate from early manhood of various nationalist movements, including Irish Home Rule and Greek independence; his poetry, of erratic quality but adventurous, was variously assembled, and some poems were published in Des Imagistes: an Anthology (anth 1914 chap) edited by Ezra Pound (1885-1972). Three articles with the overtitle "The Order of the Seraphim" (1910 The New Age) advocated – in terms of his ...
Winner, J B B
Group pseudonym of Jeff Winner (? - ), Brittany Winner (? - ) and Brianna Winner (? - ), Brittany and Brianna being identical twins, whose father Jeff may have been the primary author of the Strand sequence beginning with The Strand Prophecy (2006), a Young Adult series in which a Superhero ...
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 ...