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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.
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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 ...
Mitchelson, Katie
(? - ) UK author whose first novel, the Young Adult Wrecked (2025), is set in what resembles a Near Future UK but sufficiently at odds with that descriptor to be thought of as set in an Alternate World. The young protagonist and her intimates must cope with their being forced to use a brain-chip device known as the Spectrotext which can ...
Fantasy Times
US Fanzine (1941-1969) edited by James V Taurasi Sr, briefly by Sam Moskowitz during World War Two, Taurasi again, and Frank Prieto Jr from 1966. Published erratically until 1946, Fantasy Times thereafter established itself as a straightforward sf and fantasy newsletter or Newszine containing news, notes and reviews. In 1957 its title changed to ...
Lord of the Flies
1. Film (1963). Allen-Hogdon Productions/Two Arts. Directed by Peter Brook. Written by Brook, based on The Lord of the Flies (1954) by William Golding. Cast includes James Aubrey, Tom Chapin, Hugh Edwards and Roger Elwin. 91 minutes. Black and white. / Set in the Near Future, the film concerns a group of English schoolboys whose plane crash-lands on a remote island. With two exceptions the boys ...
Brown, Jerry Earl
(1940- ) US author in whose first sf novel, Under the City of Angels (1981), a sunken California is delved by the haunted protagonist, who finds powerful corporations and Aliens at the root of things. In Darkhold (1985), a man engages in a Godgame enterprise to Clone five lovers for himself in a kind of ...
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 ...