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Wednesday 11 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 ...
Harte, Bret
Working name of US editor, poet and author Francis Brett Harte (1836-1902), active as a journalist and editor in California from 1857, serving as first editor of the Overland Monthly from July 1868 until he resigned in January 1871; in the UK from 1880. He is best-known for his early poetry, burlesques and fiction, his most familiar story being "The Luck of Roaring Camp" (August 1868 Overland Monthly), a tale with ...
Greg, Percy
(1837-1889) UK poet, historian and author, son of the prolific essayist William Rathbone Greg (1809-1881); Greg also wrote as Lionel G Holdreth. His first work of genre interest is "Guy Neville's Ghost" for Blackwood's in March 1865; the nonfiction The Devil's Advocate (1878 2vols) contains some speculative material. His important early sf novel, Across the Zodiac: The Story of a Wrecked Record, Deciphered, Translated and Edited by P G (1880 2vols) (see ...
Kratman, Tom
(1956- ) US professional soldier from the age of seventeen, retiring in 1992 with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel, and author, most of whose work has been Military SF, including his first novel, A State of Disobedience (2003), which details the process of a revolution against a tyrannical US president in 2060. Series include the Legacy of the Aldenata with John Ringo (whom see for details ...
Ruins and Futurity
Ruins are not a necessary prelude to Futurity. A ruined structure may be nothing more than a structure that has fallen into illegible ruination (see Entropy), leaving no message for us to draw upon: no warning to the world we live in, no sense that it fronts in stone a meaningful Time Abyss, or some anticipation of things to come. But from time immemorial a Ruin, or in more recent times an Edifice constructed in the shape of a Ruin [for ...
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 ...