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Wednesday 11 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
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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 ...
Du Bois, W E B
(1868-1963) US sociologist, historian, journalist and author; active from the early 1890s, the first African-American to gain a doctorate from Harvard University (in 1895); a co-founder in 1909 of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). He was a central figure for many decades in campaigns for full civil rights. His two best known books, The Souls of Black Folk (coll 1903) and Black Reconstruction in America (1935), remain seminal ...
Smythe, James
(1980- ) UK author who writes Young Adult fiction as J P Smythe; his first novel, Hereditation (2010) is an essentially nonfantastic Gothic set in New York. Of sf interest is The Testimony (2012), in which a Dystopian Near Future world is confronted with a seemingly irrefutable annunciation – perhaps in the very ...
MacGregor, Loren J
(1950- ) US author who began publishing sf with his first novel, The Net (1987), a Galaxy-spanning sf adventure involving some unremarkable capers and a play-feud between two spacefaring merchant families. It is redeemed by the thought MacGregor gives to the implications of body-change Technology (the book reminded many readers of John Varley) and by his inventive use of the Net itself, which ...
Wilson, G Willow
(1982- ) US author whose first works were Graphic Novels, beginning with the Young Adult Cairo: A Graphic Novel (graph 2007), a tale which incorporates aspects of her own life story – she converted to Islam while teaching in Cairo during 2003 – into contemporary Urban Fantasy [see The Encyclopedia of Fantasy under links ...
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 ...