SF Encyclopedia Home Page
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
Sponsor of the day: The League of Fan Funds
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 ...
Moss, Sarah
(1975- ) Scottish author whose sf novel, Cold Earth (2009), set in the very Near Future, movingly depicts the fate – indirectly, through letters they send off into the void – of six archaeologists trapped in Greenland in winter by a planet-wide Pandemic as the End of the World looms. In Ghost Wall (2018), a single geographical point ...
Captain Nice
US tv series (1967). Talent Associates and Paramount Television with NBC Productions for NBC-TV. Created by Buck Henry. Produced by Jay Sandrich. Executive Producer Henry. Directors included Gary Nelson, Charles Rondeau, and Gene Reynolds. Writers included Henry, Stan Burns, David Ketchum, and Martin Ragaway. Cast includes William Daniels, Alice Ghostley, Ann Prentiss and Bill Zuzkert (Chief Segal). Liam Dunn and Byron Foulger appeared at times as Mayor Finney and Mr Nash respectively. ...
O'Neil, Henry Nelson
(1817-1880) Russia-born UK painter, musician and author, in the UK from early childhood; his sf novel, Two Thousand Years Hence (1868), comprises a history of the previous two millennia, written by the New Zealand governor of Britain, whose descriptions of Decadence and fit neatly into the New Zealander topos. [JC]
Kuhn, Lan
Pseudonym of Australian author Lana Sansom (1939- ), who has also written as Lana Kuhn-Sansom; her sf novel, The Outer Space Connection (1978), is an abstractly told First Contact tale. [JC]
Langford, David
(1953- ) UK author, critic, editor, publisher and sf fan, in the latter capacity recipient of 21 Hugo awards for fan writing – some of the best of his several hundred pieces are assembled as Let's Hear It for the Deaf Man (coll 1992 chap US; much exp vt The Silence of the Langford 1996; exp 2015 ebook) as Dave Langford, edited by Ben Yalow – plus five Best Fanzine Hugos ...