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 ...
Strange Fantasy
One of the many reprint Digest-size magazines published by Sol Cohen's Ultimate Publishing Co; compiled anonymously by Cohen. Six issues, three in 1969 (#8-#10) and three in 1970 (#11-#13). The strange numbering is related to the temporary death in 1969 of Science Fiction Classics after #8, but Strange Fantasy is not simply a variant title of the latter, which began again in 1971 with ...
Carrasco, Jesús
Working name of Spanish author Jesús Carrasco Jaramillo (1972- ) in whose first novel, Intemperie (2013; trans Margaret Jull Costa as Out in the Open 2015), a young man engages in a trek across a savagely overheated desert landscape reminiscent of central Spain though hotter (see Climate Change), encountering savants and supernaturally intense Villains in his search for ...
Randisi, Robert J
(1951-2024) US author, almost exclusively of nonfantastic thrillers and Westerns, more than 500 of the latter as by J R Roberts in his Clint Adams – The Gunsmith series, which did included the marginal Sasquatch Hunt (1983),in which Bigfoot is treated as a Monster. Sf was not central to his work or his wide influence in his chosen fields. He collaborated with Warren Murphy on ...
Marinetti, Filippo Tommaso
(1876-1944) Egyptian-born polemicist, editor and author, in France from early manhood and subsequently in Italy. As the author of "Fondazione e Manifesto del Futurismo" (5 February 1909 Gazzetta dell'Emilia; trans anon in Exhibition of Works by the Italian Futurist Painters, graph 1912, as "The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism"), he is credited with founding the Futurism movement; "Futurist Manifesto" argues for an epiphanic immolation in the ...
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 ...