SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Sunday 15 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 ...
Garver, Ronald G
(1938- ) US author known only for one, slightly inflamed, but otherwise unremarkable sf novel featuring UFOs: The Saucer People (1957). [JC]
Judson, Theodore
(1951- ) US history teacher and author whose first novel, Tom Wedderburn's Life (2002), contains no fantastic element. His second novel, Fitzpatrick's War (2004), is constructed as the memoir of an older person intimate with the corridors of power, in this case an ostensibly democratic government ruled by a self-aggrandizing mass-murderer. The setting is a Ruined Earth America where any relics of high ...
Van Gennep, Arnold
(1873-1957) Dutch-German anthropologist, sociologist and author, in France from early manhood; he is best known for Les Rites de Passage [for subtitle see Checklist below] (1909; trans Gabrielle L Caffe and Monika B Vizedom as The Rites of Passage 1960), whose breakdown of ceremonies of transition into three phases – separation, liminality and incorporation – has influenced authors of fiction for over a century. Van Gennep is some direct sf interest for ...
Chilson, Rob
Working name of US author Robert Dean Chilson (1945- ). His first sf story was "The Mind Reader" in Analog for June 1968. Of his novels, which generally fail to step beyond the routine, As the Curtain Falls (1974) is a Far-Future adventure with some highly coloured moments, The Star-Crowned Kings (1975) is a Space Opera about a member of a subject race ...
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 ...