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Sunday 15 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 ...
Feintuch, David
(1944-2006) US lawyer, antique dealer and author who began to publish work of genre interest with the first volume of the Nick Seafort series Midshipman's Hope (1994), which depicts the life and adventures of a young cadet on a spaceship whose rituals are extremely like that of a planet-bound – indeed, more specifically, an early nineteenth-century – navy: specifically the navy in which C S Forester's Horatio Hornblower serves, ...
Fitzgibbon, Constantine
(1919-1983) US-born author, in the UK after the mid-1930s, in Ireland after about 1965, much of whose fiction reflected a complexly conservative cast of mind. His first sf novel, The Iron Hoop (1949), describes an occupied city after World War Three; resistance is doomed. When the Kissing Had to Stop (1960) depicts in Anglophobe terms the self-destruction of a UK dominated by a Communist-inspired government. Less known but more ...
Mind Magic
US Pulp magazine, six issues, June to December 1931, monthly except for a combined September/October 1931 issue; retitled My Self for the last two issues; published by Shade Publishing, Philadelphia. Edited by G R Bay, uncredited for the first four issues. A Fantasy magazine always struggling to survive, Mind Magic published mainly articles and fiction on occult subjects. August Derleth, Ralph ...
Webb, Catherine
(1986- ) UK author who also writes as by Kate Griffin and Claire North, often for the Young Adult market; her first works – like the Wizard Laenan Kite sequence beginning with Mirror Dreams (2002) – were fantasy. The Horatio Lyle sequence – beginning with The Extraordinary Adventures of Horatio Lyle (2006) and ending with ...
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 ...