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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 ...
Oh, Temi
(1993- ) UK neuroscientist and author whose first novel, the Young Adult Do You Dream of Terra-Two? (2019), set in an Alternate History version of the world mainly distinguished from the real world through its suffering even more savage Climate Change and through the fact that the crisis has been taken seriously enough to offer some chance that ...
She
The charismatic, goddess-like female ruler – usually referred to as "She" or "She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed" – in the Ayesha sequence by H Rider Haggard, opening with She: A History of Adventure (October 1886-January 1887 The Graphic; cut 1886; full text 1887). Ayesha clearly combines aspects of Aphrodite and Isis, being imperious, ravishing and potentially Immortal; but vulgarized echoes ...
Bengal
Describing sf in Bangla (or the Bengali language) is a topic fraught with difficulties. Any understanding of sf in this linguistic region must begin with an analysis of kalpabigyan, the term generally used as a very rough analogue to sf in Bangla at present. / First of all, there are problems of definition, as kalpabigyan, which is a recent formulation (see below), has a wider range of meanings and applications than those usually associated with sf, because at least in part it ...
Crawford, Betty Anne
(1952- ) US author who published fantasy novels [see Checklist below] as by Hendra Benoit, Lee Creighton, Maxwell Hurley and Sal Liquori; under her own name, she published her only sf novel, The Bushido Incident (1992), which depicts a twenty-first-century Earth dominated by Japanese corporations while Aliens from outer space begin to destabilize this system. [JC]
Robinson, Roger
(1943- ) UK computer programmer, bibliographer and publisher, active in UK Fandom for many years. The Writings of Henry Kenneth Bulmer (1983 chap; rev 1984 chap) is an exhaustive Bibliography of one of the most prolific sf writers, Kenneth Bulmer, and Who's Hugh?: An SF Reader's Guide to Pseudonyms (1987) is similarly exhaustive in its ...