SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Saturday 18 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 14 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 ...
Continuum Science Fiction
US low-paying Semiprozine published and edited by William Rupp, Bonsall, California under the imprint Continuum Publishing. It began as a Print Magazine with an advance preview edition, containing two stories, released in November 2003 and then seven formal issues from Winter 2004 to Fall 2006. The first three issues were in an intermediate, half-legal size (8.5 x 7 in; 215 x 175 mm), though dropped to a small review size (8.5 ...
Fryers, Austin
Pseudonym of Irish trade unionist, playwright and author William Edward Clery (1861-1931), in the UK from 1877, whose activism in his public life cost him more than one job for political reasons. His first novel of interest, The Devil and the Inventor (1900), bridges sf and fantasy (the term Equipoise, here normally used for works whose relationship to the genres they transact is retrospective rather than proleptic, could easily be applied to this ...
Mann, Phillip
(1942-2022) UK-born author resident in New Zealand from 1969, whose career as a theatre director, translation copy-polisher, drama teacher and university Reader in Drama brought to his writing a strong visual and structural sense. His first sf publication, The Eye of the Queen (1982), is an accomplished novel of First Contact between humans and the enigmatic Pe-Ellians. The Story of the Gardener diptych ...
Valigursky, Ed
(1926-2009) Working name of American artist Edward Valigursky, sometimes credited as such or simply as Valigursky; on a few occasions, he used the pseudonym William Rembach. After artistic training at the Art Institute of Chicago, the American Academy of Arts, and the Art Institute of Pittsburgh, he began working as an associate art director for Ziff-Davis in 1952, became art director for Quinn Publishing in the following year, and moved into freelance work two ...
Langford, David
(1953- ) UK author, critic, editor, publisher and sf fan, in the latter capacity recipient of 21 Hugo awards for fan writing – some of the best of his several hundred pieces are assembled as Let's Hear It for the Deaf Man (coll 1992 chap US; much exp vt The Silence of the Langford 1996; exp 2015 ebook) as Dave Langford, edited by Ben Yalow – plus five Best Fanzine Hugos ...