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Thursday 12 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.
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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 ...
Orbit Books
Publishing line launched in 1974 as the sf/fantasy imprint of the London-based company Macdonald Futura, which was bought by Little, Brown in 1992; in 2006 Little, Brown was in turn acquired by Hachette Livre. / Along with a medley of mostly though not exclusively US reprint works, early Futura/Orbit releases included paperbacks of significant retro Anthologies edited by Brian Aldiss, such as Space Opera (anth ...
Sims, Alan
(? - ) Author, presumably UK, of the novels Phoinix (1928) and Anna Perenna (1930). Phoinix reworks Greek Mythology, not only retelling the saga of Achilles in the Trojan War but bringing in Hercules, the Argonauts and the poet Homeros (see Homer), who here exaggerates Achilles' rage and violence for dramatic effect. Anna Perenna (1930) is a broad ...
Brizzolara, John
(1950- ) US author who began publishing work of genre interest with "The Opposite House" in Weird Tales for Fall 1981 with Diane Brizzolara; over the next several years he published fairly frequently in the magazines, and released one sf novel, Empire's Horizon (1989), a Space Opera whose protagonists, on a rebel planet, challenge the Terran Empire (see ...
Bourne Films
Very loosely based on the Jason Bourne series of novels by Robert Ludlum and subsequently Eric Van Lustbader, the Bourne films comprise one tightly-knit trilogy starring Matt Damon; plus the first of a projected series of continuations starring Jeremy Renner as a differently modified CIA operative, who is also on the run; plus a late continuation of the original story – perhaps because the outlier parallel ...
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 ...