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Saturday 14 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 ...
Harsh Mistress
US Semiprozine published by DNA Publications, Greenfield, Massachusetts and edited by Warren Lapine with Kevin Rogers and Tim Ballou. Its title was taken from Robert A Heinlein's novel The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress (December 1965-April 1966 If; 1966); this gave the impression to many that it was a bondage magazine rather than sf, which may have affected ...
Slater, Henry J
(1879-1963) UK author whose work showed the influence of H G Wells in both Ship of Destiny (1951), where Post-Holocaust survivors sail across a drowned Europe, and The Smashed World (1952), set 3000 years hence in a World State which is destroyed by a reborn Napoleon. Some of Slater's effects oddly prefigure the afterlife fantasies of Philip José Farmer. ...
Loss of Feeling
Russian film (1935; vt Gibel Sensatsii; vt Loss of Sensation; vt Jim Ripple's Robot; vt Jim Ripl's Robot). Mezhrabpomfilm. Based on Idut Robotari ["The Robotariat Is Coming" or "Robots Are Coming"] (1931) by Volodymyr Vladko (see below and Ukraine). Cast includes Vladimir Gardin, Pavel Poltoratskiy, Vergiliy Renin, Nikolay Rybnikov, Sergei Vecheslov and Mariya Volgina. 86 minutes. Black and ...
Sabe, Quien
["Who knows?" in Spanish.] Pseudonym, as Quién Sabe, of Jackson Gregory for his Lost Race story Daughter of the Sun (1921). The same name was independently used without a diacritical – apparently by Harry Bates – for "The City of Eric" (Spring 1929 Amazing Stories Quarterly), another ...
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 ...