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 ...
McKean, Dave
Working name of British artist David Jeff McKean (1963- ), primarily known for his work in Comics and Graphic Novels, though he has also painted book covers and engaged in other activities. After attending Berkshire College of Art and Design from 1982 to 1986, McKean visited New York to seek work in the comics field and met Neil Gaiman, forming a friendship that would be central ...
Trout, Kilgore
An imaginary but hugely prolific sf-writer character in Kurt Vonnegut Jr's God Bless You, Mr Rosewater (1965), Slaughterhouse-Five (1969), Breakfast of Champions (1973) and such later novels as Jailbird (1979) and Timequake (1997), rather obviously echoing the name of Theodore Sturgeon. The name was first used as a pseudonym by L W ...
Kirkbride, John
(? - ) UK author, not to be confused with the UK singer-songwriter John Kirkbride (1946- ); his Young Adult novel, Life on Urth (1994), carries its young protagonists to a Parallel World that turns out to be a comic Parody of Earth. Adventures accumulate winningly from this point. [JC]
Goodman, Alison
(1966- ) Australian author who began publishing work of genre interest with "One Last Zoom at the Buzz Bar" in The Patternmaker (anth 1994) edited by Lucy Sussex, and whose Young Adult sf novel, Singing the Dogstar Blues (1998), lightly sketches in the hard times inflicted upon a teenager by her Alien partner who engages in ...
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 ...