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 ...
van Vogt, A E
(1912-2000) Canadian author, in the US from November 1944, when he was welcomed to California by the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society and made regular appearances at its meetings (see Fandom). He was born Alfred Vogt and legally changed this to Alfred Elton van Vogt during the process of applying for American citizenship in 1945. Van Vogt had not left his native land until his early thirties, and it is ...
Clow, Martha deMey
(1932-2010) US artist, graphic designer, architect and author, whose sf novel, Starbreed (1970), is about an adolescent boy with Superpowers who bursts into prominence. [JC]
Sweterlitsch, Tom
(? - ) US author who also signs his name Thomas Sweterlitsch; he began to publish work of genre interest with "The Disposable Man" in Something Wicked SF and Horror Magazine for February 2012, a Satire on post 9/11 American Politics. Tomorrow and Tomorrow (2015) is set mostly in a Virtual Reality Keep embedded in the ...
Haley, Guy
(1973- ) UK author whose Richards & Klein Investigations sequence – comprising the short Nemesis Worm (2011 ebook), Reality 36 (2011) and Omega Point (2012) – features the eponymous noir detectives, one an AI and the other an Android, in a complexly delineated distant Near Future marked by the multiplex layers of reality and ...
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 ...