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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 ...
Man from Planet X, The
Film (1951). Mid-Century Films. Directed by Edgar G Ulmer. Written by Aubrey Wisberg and Jack Pollexfen. Cast includes Raymond Bond, Robert Clarke, Margaret Field and William Schallert. 70 minutes. Black and white. / As the wandering Planet X approaches Earth, an Alien (actor unknown and uncredited) from the planet lands his Spaceship at the place where his world will come closest to Earth, in rural Scotland. This location ...
Darwin, Erasmus
(1731-1802) UK physician, philosopher, inventor and poet; grandfather of Charles Darwin (1809-1882) and of Francis Galton. Though he was noted as an inventor of devices (both built and theoretical) from water pumps to speaking machines to a mechanical bird (see Inventions), and though his work as an advocate of the sexual classificatory system of Carolus Linnaeus (1707-1778) (see Biology) was of ...
Nott, Kathleen
(1905-1999) UK poet, author and academic, perhaps best known for The Emperor's Clothes (1953), in which she mounted articulate and scathing attacks on the religious pretensions of such writers as T S Eliot (1888-1965) and C S Lewis. Her second novel, The Dry Deluge (1947), which is a Scientific Romance, describes the founding of an Underground ...
Doherty, G D
(1927- ) UK editor. An English teacher and sf enthusiast, Doherty produced the Anthology Aspects of Science Fiction (anth 1959), designed for use in British secondary schools. A carefully chosen selection, it proved popular and successful among both pupils and teachers. Further anthologies similarly aimed were Second Orbit (anth 1965) and Stories from Science Fiction (anth 1966). Doherty also ...
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 ...