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Tuesday 21 April 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 20 April 2026
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Watson, Ian
(1943-2026) UK teacher and author who lectured in English in Tanzania (1965-1967) and Tokyo (1967-1970) before beginning to publish sf with "Roof Garden Under Saturn" for New Worlds in 1969; he then taught Future Studies for six years at Birmingham Polytechnic, taking there one of the first academic courses in sf in the UK; he became a full-time writer in 1976, publishing around 200 short stories since 1969 at a gradually increasing tempo and with visibly ...
Gretta, J Clemens
Working name of US illustrator Joseph Clemens Gretter (1904-1988); he began signing his work simply as "Gretta" in the early 1930s. He illustrated many volumes for the Stratemeyer Syndicate, mostly for nonfantastic series like The Hardy Boys and the X Bar X Boys, though occasionally he did sf covers, like that for Castaways of the Stratosphere; Or, Hunting the Vanished Balloonists (1935) as by Franklin W ...
Web of Mystery
US Comic (1951-1955). Ace Magazines. 29 issues. Artists include Lou Cameron, Jim McLaughlin, Kenneth Rice and Mike Sekowsky. Script writers include Paul Parker and Robert Turner. 36 pages, with 3-4 long strips, 1-2 one-page strips purporting to tell true stories of horror, plus a short text story. / Web of Mystery was predominantly a Horror comic, but regularly had sf tales or ones with sf ...
Hare+Guu
Japanese animated tv series (2001). Original title Jungle Wa Itsumo Hale Nochi Guu ["Jungle: Always Fine, With a Chance of Guu"]. Shin-Ei Animation. Directed by Tsutomu Mizushima. Written by Michiko Yokote, based on the Manga by Renjuro Kindaichi. Voice cast includes Rikako Aikawa, Kaoru Morota and Naoko Watanabe. 26 23-minute episodes, plus thirteen OVAs. Colour. / Ten-year-old Hare (Aikawa) lives happily in a jungle ...
Williams, Gordon
(1934-2017) Scottish journalist and author best known for the nonfantastic The Siege of Trencher's Farm (1969), filmed by Sam Peckinpah as Straw Dogs (1971), and for the Hazell detective novels with UK footballer and football manager Terry Venables (1943-2023), the two writing together as P B Yuill. This series began with Hazell Plays Solomon (1974), with all three volumes being later televised. A marginally sf football novel written with ...
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 ...