SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Monday 9 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
Sponsor of the day: The League of Fan Funds
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 ...
Roberts, James Hall
Pseudonym of US author Robert Lipscomb Duncan (1927-1999), which he used for some thrillers at the edge of the fantastic, including The Burning Sky (1966), a Lost Race tale set in the Sonora Desert of Arizona, where remnants of the highly-civilized Hohokam civilization have survived in secret. [JC]
Aru Kararu no Isan
Japanese Original Video Animation (1993; vt Legacy of Aru Kararu; vt The Inheritance of Aru Kararu; vt Al Caral no Isan). Animate Film. Based on Al Kalal no Isan ["The Inheritance of Al Kalal"] (1985 Ryū; graph 1990) by Katsumi Michihara. Directed by Kôichi Ishiguro. Written by Mayori Sekijima. Voice cast includes Yuzuru Fujimoto, Aya Hisakawa, Hideyuki Hori, Ai Orikasa and Hideyuki Tanaka. 75 ...
von Braun, Wernher
(1912-1977) German-born engineer and rocket scientist who notoriously led the Peenemünde team that developed Rocket technology for Nazi Germany before and during World War Two, leading to the V-2 or Vergeltungswaffe 2 ["Vengeance Weapon 2"] rocket-powered missile used against London and other Allied targets 1944-1945. As a Colonel in the Nazi SS, he has been accused of ...
Lee, Eli
(? - ) UK editor and author, articles editor for Strange Horizons; active from before 2015. Her first novel, A Strange and Brilliant Light (2021) – set in an ambivalently described Alternate World, or (it may be) a Zone possibly under Secret-Master control – depicts the marshalling of ...
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 ...