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
Sponsor of the day: Andy Richards of Cold Tonnage Books
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 ...
Last and First Men
Film (2017). Icelandic Film Centre, Zik Zak Filmworks. Directed by Jóhann Jóhannsson. Written by Jóhannsson. From Last and First Men (1930) by Olaf Stapledon. Music by Jóhannsson. Cast consists of Tilda Swinton (voice only). 70 minutes. Black and white. / All that can be seen for the seventy minute duration of Last and First Men, via slow tracking shots in black and white, is nothing more than ...
Landor, Robert Eyres
(1781-1869) UK minister and author, brother of the more famous Walter Savage Landor (1775-1864), whose novel, The Fountain of Arethusa (1848 2vols), combines the supernatural and Proto SF as two explorers enter an Underground world (see Hollow Earth), where they engage in discussions with the worthy dead, who either enjoy an Afterlife [see The ...
Sapper
Pseudonym of UK author Herman Cyril McNeile (1888-1937), who wrote many thrillers and stories of World War One, in which he served. Initially writing as H C McNeile (the byline used for US editions of all his short stories), "Sapper" became famous for the creation in Bull-Dog Drummond: The Adventures of a Demobilized Officer Who Found Peace Dull (1920) of Bull-Dog Drummond, a thuggish antisemitic crime-fighting gentleman vigilante, some of ...
Cinefex
US Cinema perfect-bound 8 x 9 in magazine printed on slick paper in similar format to a trade paperback. Published by Don Shay/Cinefex LLC. Editors John Duncan, others. 172 issues 1980-2021. Quarterly. / Cinefex grew largely out of publisher Shay's love for the films and visual effects work of Willis H O'Brien, and over the years it remained a cornerstone magazine for those interested in state-of-the-art cinematic ...
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 ...