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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 ...
O'Mahony, T P
(1939- ) Irish journalist and author, working in the former capacity 1967-1989 as religious affairs correspondent for The Irish Press. He is of some sf interest for The Vatican Caper (1981), about the assassination of the imaginary Pope Patrick I, and for the more ambitious The Lynch Years: A Political Fantasy (1986), which circumambiates the life of the real Irish politician Jack Lynch (1917-1999) with material evocative of tall-tale ...
Dillon, Diane and Leo
Leo Dillon (1933-2012) and Diane Dillon (1933- ), US illustrators, active together from around 1953, married in 1957; the only team ever to win either the Hugo or the Locus Award for Best Professional Artist, both of which they received in 1971. They began freelancing in 1958, at first working separately. Together their work covers many fields: record album covers, advertising art, Christmas cards, children's ...
Baker, Adam
(1969- ) UK author whose Near Future Outpost Universe sequence beginning with Outpost (2011) follows the actions of a mixed group of survivors of a worldwide Pandemic, a Zombie Apocalypse plague which transforms its victims into rampaging metallic Monsters. The cast, which has survived this Disaster in an ...
Last Man
For the past two centuries and more, the vast majority stories featuring human beings to whom the term "last man" can be applied are in fact men; several early tales and novels incorporate that circumstance into their titles (see examples immediately below), and in not a few of these tales a "last woman" is met, in time for the race to continue. For these historical reasons, this entry has not been renamed Last Human. The notion of the Last Man left alive on Earth (see ...
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 ...