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Saturday 14 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 ...
Fox, Gardner F
(1911-1986) US lawyer and author, who began writing in 1937 for DC Comics, including Superman. Arguably his most important work was for Comics: though it is claimed that he published at least 160 books under various names – not all are given here; some are Westerns with fantastic elements – this total pales beside his 4000 or more comic-book stories, also ...
Driou, Alfred
(1810-1880) French priest (apparently) and author, prolific under his own name and a variety of pseudonyms; of sf interest is Les Aventures d'un Aéronaute Parisien dans les Mondes Inconnus (1856; trans Brian Stableford as The Adventures of A Parisian Aeronaut In The Unknown Worlds 2012), though in fact the promised Fantastic Voyage of the solar system by aerostat gets no farther than ...
Hovenden, Robert
UK author, most probably Robert Meyrick Hovenden (circa 1809-1885), who published various books 1844-1876. Of sf interest is an unfictionalized Future History, A Tract of Future Times [for subtitle see Checklist] (1851), told as though written after 1950 and giving an accounting of the previous era, concentrating on the last fifty years of the nineteenth century, espousing a kind of benevolently anarchic ...
Watson, Aaron
(1850-1926) UK journalist and author, active from the earl 1870s; he is of sf interest for For Lust of Gold [for subtitle see Checklist below] (1 November 1888-16 February 1889 The Shields Daily Gazette; 1892), a Lost Race tale, set in Elizabethan times, which describes the discovery of the hidden City of Manoa, where treasure is found but discord mounts. [JC]
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 ...