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Monday 16 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 ...
Cutter, R H
(? -? ) UK author known only for a Lost Race novel, Reached at Last: A Romance of Nineteenth Century Science Chivalrous Endurance and Perseverance with a Sequel (1886), unusually for this sub-genre set in the Near Future, in which an expedition to the North Pole, travelling in an advanced Airship, comes across a civilized Utopia ...
Powers of Matthew Star, The
US tv series (1982-1983). Paramount Network Television for NBC-TV. Created by Steven de Souza. Executive Producers included Harve Bennett, Bruce Lansbury. Directors included Barry Crane, Leslie H Martinson, Ron Saltof, Leonard Nimoy. Writers included de Souza, Gil Grant, Richard Christian Matheson, Walter Koenig, Bruce Shelly. Cast includes Peter Barton, John Crawford, Chip ...
Mader, Friedrich W
(1866-1945) German author, mainly of juvenile novels, many set in German East Africa and written somewhat in the style of H Rider Haggard. Wunderwelten (1911; trans Max Shachtman as Distant Worlds: The Story of a Voyage to the Planets 1932) is a juvenile which takes its Spaceship crew to Mars and finally – one of the first sf texts to ...
Heng, Rachel
(1988- ) Singaporean author, in US from adulthood. In her first novel, the Near Future Suicide Club: A Novel About Living (2018), which is set in a vividly cruel New York Media Landscape, a young woman whose genetic makeup gives her the chance of becoming Immortal (see Eugenics) must decide between ...
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 ...