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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 ...
Saki
Pseudonym of Hector Hugh Munro (1870-1916), Burma-born UK author and journalist in England from infancy; noted for the acerbic wit and grace of his fiction, almost all of it in short forms. In the late 1890s he began writing contemporary political sketches, inspired and illustrated by F Carruthers Gould, for The Westminster Gazette as by Saki, the name of the "Minister of Wine" in The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam, publishing these ...
Counterfactual
Item of Terminology sometimes used to denote the Alternate History subgenre, thus avoiding the usual sf term. This avoidance may indicate either dislike of the conventional but grammatically awkward phrase "alternate history" or – regrettably often – an attempt to distance "respectable" or "literary" use of this traditional sf technique from science fiction itself. A narrative described as counterfactual will ...
Clarke, Lindsay
(1939- ) UK poet and author whose work in general navigates the water margins of Fantastika; though sf elements cannot be said to dominate, his narratives are in fact complexly polyvalent [for a somewhat different take on his work, see his entry in The Encyclopedia of Fantasy under links below]. Clarke's first novel, Sunday Whiteman (1987), examines dilemmas of ...
Salsitz, Rhondi A Vilott
(1949-2024) US author Rhondi Ann Vilott Salsitz, who began to publish work of genre interest with "Persephone" in Orbit 21 (anth 1980) edited by Damon Knight, as Rhondi Vilott. Titles under an abbreviation of her birth name, Rhondi Vilott, and less frequently under her married name, R A V Salsitz, have been restricted to fantasies [see Checklist]; she has also written as by Emily Drake, Elizabeth Forrest, Anne Knight and Jenna Rhodes [again 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 ...