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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 ...
Al-Khalili, Jim
Working name of Iraqi-born broadcaster, physicist, academic and author Jameel Sadik Al-Khalili (1962- ), in the UK from 1979; several of his nonfiction publications, beginning with Black Holes, Wormholes and Time Machines (1999), have been addressed to the intelligent general reader. He is of sf interest for his first novel, Sunfall (2019), describes a Near Future Disaster perhaps ...
Cope, Julian
(1957- ) UK singer-songwriter, formerly lead singer of The Teardrop Explodes, who has since the 1980s released a number of playfully apocalyptic albums as a solo artist. The song "Upwards at 45" (in Jehovahkill, 1993) is a psychedelic account of Alien contact. Autogeddon (1994) – the album takes its title from the poet Heathcote Williams (whom see) – envisions cars ...
Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet
US Small Press magazine published originally by Gleekit, Inc, of Brighton, Massachusetts and from issue #6 (May 2000) by Small Beer Press, Brooklyn, New York; produced and edited by Kelly Link and Gavin Grant. Published twice yearly since Winter 1996/1997 in a distinctive half-legal-size format (8.5 x 7 in; 216 x 180 mm), the early issues had minimal distribution beyond the Boston area (the first issue had only 26 copies printed and had to ...
Smith, Mitchell
(1935- ) US author who has also written Westerns as by Roy LeBeau; in his early career he was best-known for crime novels, of which Reprisal (1999) is of some interest, hinting at Horror in SF. Of sf interest is his later Snowfall sequence comprising Snowfall (2002), Kingdom River (2003) and Moonrise (2004), set in a ...
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 ...