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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 ...
Binet, Laurent
(1972- ) French teacher and author whose earlier work tends to employ metafictional devices, interweaving "nonfictional" modes of historical apprehension and surreal narrative techniques (see Absurdist SF; Fabulation). His first work of interest, Forces et faiblesses de nos muqueuses ["Strengths and Weaknesses of Our Mucus Membranes"] (2000), is an estranged and modestly fictionalized ...
Showalter, Gena
(1975- ) US author almost exclusively of paranormal romances [not listed below], mostly designed for the Young Adult market. Of sf interest is the Alien Huntress sequence beginning with Awaken Me Darkly (2005), set in a Near Future New Chicago infested by Aliens, most of them not amiable; the kick-ass protagonist, head of the police department's Alien ...
O'Brien, Caragh M
(? - ) US author who also writes as by Sierra Greer; her Young Adult Birthmarked Trilogy, comprising Birthmarked (2010), Prized (2011) and Promised (2012), begins in a Near Future American Dystopia where women, treated as obscenely fruitful breeders, are retained in oppressive Keeps. ...
Timlett, Peter Valentine
(1933-2013) UK author whose sf/fantasy Atlantis trilogy – The Seedbearers (1974), The Power of the Serpent (1976) and Twilight of the Serpent (1977) – deals in occasionally occult terms with Atlantis and its fall, moving subsequently to the founding of civilization in Britain by survivors of the collapse, who hope that Atlantean impulses might be preserved on the new Island. ...
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 ...