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Friday 13 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.
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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 ...
Space Man
US Comic (1962-1963). Dell Comics. Seven issues (but see below). Artists include Jack Sparling. Scriptwriters include Ken Fitch. 36 pages: issues featured a long Space Man story, with a few one-page, usually factual, pieces; from #3 there was also a 4 page series called the Space Hogs (though not so named in #3), about a space courier company. / For ten years the mysterious "anti-force" (see ...
Housman, Clemence
(1861-1955) UK artist, illustrator, suffragette, poet and author. She was the sister of the poet A E Housman (1859-1936), and illustrated some works by her younger brother Laurence Housman; he in turn illustrated her most famous tale, The Were-Wolf (December 1890 Atalanta; 1896), set in a far-northern clime, where twin brothers disagree over a female Mysterious Stranger. In order to defend his ...
Drennan, Kathryn M
(1956- ) US author, married to J Michael Straczynski, with whom she has collaborated on articles; in her own right, she is the author of Babylon 5: Book 9: To Dream in the City of Sorrows (1997), which novelizes episodes from the television show Babylon 5. [JC]
Barber Westchester
US animated film (2022). Herbert Sorbet Studios. Directed and written by Jonni Peppers. Voice cast includes Maddie Brewer, Lindsey DeMars, Zach Dorn, Chris Kim, Sam Lane, Grace Milk, Jonni Peppers, Frankie Tamaru and Victoria Vincent. 90 minutes. Colour. / DeSabla is a town located in a mountainous region of California; Barber Westchester (Kim) – her head a mass of blue hair with two large eyes protruding – is Mayor Wisconsin's (Peppers/Brewer) official astronomer (see ...
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 ...