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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 ...
Gansky, Alton
(1953- ) US Baptist minister, entrepreneur and author; several of his avowedly Christian novels are of sf interest, including Dark Moon (2002), in which the Moon is mysteriously stained with a kind of Sign; Angel (2007), in which a Mysterious Stranger from another planet seems to promise revelations pleasing to those of a religious bent, but who may in fact represent darker ...
Starr, Bill
(1933-2021) US author primarily known for the Farstar and Son sequence of Space Opera adventures featuring a slightly rascally entrepreneur and his son: The Way to Dawnworld (1975) and The Treasure of Wonderwhat (1977). The books have something of the quaintness of their titles. Starr's other known sf consists of a single short story, "The People Who Could Not Kill" (in Stellar #3, anth 1977, ed Judy-Lynn ...
Firefox
Film (1982). Warner Bros. Directed by Clint Eastwood. Written by Alex Lasker, Wendell Wellman, based on Firefox (1977) by Craig Thomas. Cast includes Warren Clarke, Eastwood, Nigel Hawthorne and Freddie Jones. 136 minutes. Colour. / The sf aspect of the film is a new Russian fighter, the MIG 31 or "Firefox", which can fly at Mach-5 and operates through electronic translation of the pilot's brain patterns – that is, thought control ...
Moskowitz, Dorothy
(1940- ) US singer-songwriter, best known as lead vocalist of the experimental rock band The United States of America (1967-1968). Her solo album Rising to Eternity (2023) was inspired by the James Webb Space Telescope, and is in Moskowitz's words "a free-form fantasy" about what revelations it may open up. These include the discovery of Alien life forms, a planet of constantly raining metal, and previously unknown ...
Clute, John
(1940- ) Canadian critic, editor and author, in the UK from 1969; married to Judith Clute from 1964, partner of Elizabeth Hand since 1996. He began to publish work of genre interest with an sf-tinged poem "Carcajou Lament" in Triquarterly for Winter 1960 [ie Autumn 1959]; he began consistently publishing sf reviews in his "New Fiction" column for the Toronto Star (1966-1967), and later in ...