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
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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 ...
Brown, Charles N
(1937-2009) US publisher and editor, an sf fan who began his involvement in the field in the 1950s and who remains best known for co-founding (with Ed Meskys and Dave Vanderwerf) and running the sf news magazine Locus in 1968, initially as a Fanzine (see Newszines) addressed primarily to fans in the Boston, Massachusetts area; but eventually expanding its remit until it became the default organ of record and ...
Siddell, Thomas
(? - ) UK videogame animator and cartoonist, also known as Tom Siddell; best known for the long-running webcomic Gunnerkrigg Court which began in April 2005. Gunnerkrigg Court centres on Antimony "Annie" Carver and her friend Katerina "Kat" Donlan in a surreal UK boarding school. The story contrasts the semi-mythical forest outside of the school with a large urban sprawl of mostly lifeless school grounds. Annie Carver takes on the role of ...
Identity
"Who am I?" "Am I who I think I am?" The unease inherent in such ancient philosophical queries has been exploited by sf authors in very many ways, ranging from melodramatic banality to genuinely subtle questioning of the nature of our sense of selfhood. Identity is lost or confused, usually temporarily, in Amnesia scenarios. It is juggled in stories of Identity Exchange and Identity Transfer, ...
Cook, Rick
Working name of US author James Richard Cook (1944-2022), who began publishing work of genre interest with "Mortality" in Analog for January 1987; he subsequently published several sf stories in this journal, and a very large number of nonfiction pieces on computer technology. As an author of fiction he is most noted for his fantasy, primarily for the Wizard sequence of Technofantasy-tinged tales – beginning with ...
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 ...