SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Friday 13 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: Conversation 2023
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 ...
Van der Graaf Generator
UK prog-rock band comprising Peter Hammill, Hugh Robert Banton (1949- ) and Guy Evans (1947- ). Highly regarded in the narrow world of English prog, the group released a series of musically soursweet and ornately complex albums whose obscure lyrics trace out fantastical versions of ordinary life that shade, often, into a more structured fabulation. The first album, The Aerosol Grey Machine (1969), ...
Jeeves, Terry
Working name of UK schoolteacher, long-time Fanzine editor, author and artist Byron Terry Jeeves (1922-2011), whose privately published Bibliographies of Astounding were bylined B T Jeeves and began with A Checklist of Astounding: Part 1 – 1930 to 1939 (1963 chap) [see Checklist below]; these researches were incorporated into The Complete Index to Astounding/Analog (1981) ...
Hotston, Stewart
(? - ) UK author who began to publish work of genre interest with "Haecceity" in La Femme (anth 2014) edited by Ian Whates. His sf series, the Oligarchy sequence beginning with A Family War (2016), is set in a high-Technology Dystopian fairly-distant Near Future ruled by an arrogant ...
Spacemen
US letter-size Cinema magazine printed on cheap newsprint-quality paper. Eight numbered issues from July 1961 to June 1964, plus Spacemen 1965 Yearbook. Published by Warren Publishing's subsidiary imprint Sparky Publications/Spacemen Inc. Edited by Forrest J Ackerman. / Spacemen was intended as a more sf-oriented companion to Ackerman's ...
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 ...