SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Tuesday 10 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: Andy Richards of Cold Tonnage Books
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 ...
Gunn, Eileen
(1945- ) US editor and author who began publishing work of genre interest with "What Are Friends For?" in Amazing for November 1978, though most of her work of interest dates from at least a decade later; the work assembled in Stable Strategies and Others (coll 2004) is mostly contemporary with or later than "Stable Strategies for Middle Management" (June 1988 Asimov's), while ...
Fantastic Fears
US Comic (1953-1954). Nine issues (but see below). Four Star publications. Artists include Jack Abel, Steve Ditko, the Iger Shop and Robert Webb. Writers of scripts include Bruce Hamilton and Ruth Roche. Usually four strips and a two-page text story per issue. / Fantastic Fears featured Horror stories, mostly with supernatural elements, but some were borderline sf. For instance, #2 has ...
Jennings, Gordon
(1896-1953) Special effects pioneer who worked on nearly 200 films in his long career. These included Dr Cyclops (1940), and the supernatural comedy-romance I Married a Witch (1942). He is of most importance to the sf film for overseeing the effects for The War of the Worlds (1953). Unfortunately Jennings died before this film's release and subsequent great success. [GSt]
Courtney, S
(? - ) Zimbabwean author whose play, Fallout (performed 19897; 1990 chap), portrays a Zimbabwean family initially indifferent but quickly coming to an awareness that the Near Future outbreak of World War Three, starting on the Russian-Chinese border, has ended civilization. As the play ends in the clutches of Nuclear Winter, radiation ...
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 ...