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Monday 9 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 ...
Bryher
(1894-1983) UK philanthropist and author, born Annie Winifred Ellerman; she had begun to use Bryher as a pseudonym before the publication of her first book, Region of Lutany (1914 chap) – which was poetry – and eventually took the name by deed poll; she normally wrote simply as Bryher. Her philanthropic activities extended through much of the twentieth century, and included financial support for figures as wide-ranging as Sigmund Freud preparing in 1938 to go into ...
Fairman, Henry Clay
(1848-1899) US lawyer, editor and author whose Lost World novel, The Third World: A Tale of Love and Strange Adventure (21 April-October [or later] 1894 The Sunny South; 1895) oddly (though crudely) prefigures Dan Simmons's The Terror (2007) in depicting the rescue by an Eskimo of the last survivor of the John Franklin expedition (circa 1850), who then finds a 150 mile passage into a ...
Space Trip
Polish animated short film (1961, original title Wycieczka w Kosmos). Studio Miniatur Filmowych. Directed by Krzysztof Dębowski. 10 minutes. Colour. / This was the first of a pair of short animated versions of Stanisław Lem's Ijon Tichy tales, the other being The Trap (1962; original title Pulapka; vt Bezludna Planeta), also directed by Dębowski and discussed below. ...
Putney, Susan K
(?1951- ) US author and former comics store owner. Her novel Against Arcturus (1972 dos) is an sf tale with a Space Opera frame in which explorers from Earth visit a world inhabited by Aliens, which is then occupied by invaders from an authoritarian human colony based in the Arcturus system. Attempts to stir the alien "Sarbr" to rebellion receive only lukewarm co-operation; it emerges to some ...
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 ...