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 ...
Burton, LeVar
Working name of US actor and director Levardis Burton (1957- ), who signs his first name as LeVar. He has been much involved in the Star Trek Television enterprises, playing the blind Lieutenant Commander Geordi La Forge in Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987-1994) and directing several episodes in that and other Star Trek series; he reprised the ...
Armstrong, Luanne
(1949- ) Canadian teacher, poet and author, active from the mid-1990s in various genres, including stories for younger children; her studies of rural life in British Columbia (not listed below) are strongly felt. The Bone House (2002), her first tale of sf interest, is set in a Near Future British Columbia devastated first by Climate Change and second by corporate ...
Ward, George Whiteley
(? -? ) UK author who published occasionally in English magazines from around 1900; his juvenile tales for Chums, like "The Chessmen of Ghor Khi Laht" (19 January 1924 Chums), are apparently fantastic. He is of sf interest for Drelma: A Tale of the Great Sahara (1908), a Lost Race tale in which Ancient Egyptians are discovered in the modern Sahara. [JC]
Chilton, Charles
(1917-2013) UK Radio producer and scriptwriter whose three sf novels comprise a rewrite into novel form of his three-part BBC radio series, Journey Into Space (1953-1956), which he produced and wrote, and which were – and have remained through rebroadcasts – extremely popular. The individual volumes are Journey Into Space (1954), novelizing the first story (broadcast 21 September 1952 to 19 January 1954); The Red Planet ...
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 ...