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Saturday 14 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
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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 ...
Burgoyne, Alan Hughes
(1880-1929) UK politician – Unionist MP for Aylesbury from 1924 – and author, mostly on naval matters. Trafalgar Re-Fought (1905) with W Laird Clowes replays the Battle of Trafalgar in a twentieth-century setting. His Future War novel, The War Inevitable (1908), spends much of its time at sea in the context of the historical Anglo-Japanese Alliance (1902-1921, formally terminated 1923). A ...
Schwarz-Bart, Simone
(1938- ) French-born author, in Guadeloupe from infancy, married to André Schwarz-Bart; of sf interest is Ti Jean L'horizon (1979; trans Barbara Bray as Between Two Worlds 1981), an Equipoisal tale tracing the life of a folk hero in mythological and sf terms; the great cloud that darkens Guadeloupe may be deemed allegorical of white ...
Crampton, Patricia
(1925-2016) Indian-born translator, in UK from 1930. As chair of the Translators Association, she contributed importantly to the argument that translators were essential contributors to the world of literature in general, and that in specific they should not be asked to work for flat rates, without hope of royalties, or of sharing revenues from the PLR (Public Lending Right) after it was created in the UK in 1979. After working as a translator in 1947 at the Nuremberg trials of Germans accused ...
Wood, Tat
(? - ) Author, initially in collaboration with Lawrence Miles, of The Unauthorized Guide to Doctor Who, a nonfiction companion to the Television series Doctor Who whose first-published volume is About Time 3: The Unauthorized Guide to Doctor Who – Seasons 7 to 11 (2004) with Miles. [DRL]
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 ...