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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.
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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 ...
Operation: Peril
US Comic (1950-1953). American Comics Group (ACG). 16 issues. Artists include Ken Bald, Ogden Whitney and George Wilhelms. Scriptwriters include Richard Hughes. #1-#6, 52 pages; #7-#16, 36 pages. At first each issue had three long strip series (#1 and #3 also having an additional one-off strip), some short text stories, plus various short strips (usually non-fiction); from #12 the series strips increased to four. / ...
Brenton, Howard
(1942- ) UK screenwriter and playwright, active from the late 1960s, his dramas often being Satires focused on social, economic and political issues in the UK, frequently conveyed through estranged pantomime routines as evolved from Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956), some of whose plays he has adapted for British performance. Singletons of sf interest include ...
Science Fiction Foundation
UK research unit set up in 1971 at the North East London Polytechnic (which became the University of East London in 1992), but semi-autonomous, being controlled by a council, partly academics and partly sf professionals, and including George Hay, whose enthusiasm had much to do with the SFF's inception. Peter Nicholls, the first administrator (1971-1977), was followed by Malcolm Edwards ...
Blood Beast Terror, The
Film (1968; vt The Vampire Beast Craves Blood US). Directed by Vernson Sewell. Written by Peter Bryan. Cast includes Peter Cushing, Robert Flemyng, Vanessa Howard, Wanda Ventham and William Warrender. 88 minutes, cut to 80 minutes for home video release. Colour. / Scotland Yard detective-inspector Quennell (Cushing) investigates a series of bizarre deaths, mostly of young men who have had all the blood drained from their bodies. He consults Professor Carl Mellinger (Flemyng), ...
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 ...