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Tuesday 14 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 13 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 more than 180 short stories since 1969 at a gradually increasing tempo and with visibly ...
Puni Puni Poemy
Japanese original video animation series (2001); original title Puni Puni ☆ Poemii. J.C.Staff. Directed by Shinichi Watanabe. Written by Yōsuke Kuroda. Voice cast includes Yuka Imai, Ryu Itou and Yumiko Kobayashi. Two 30-minute episodes. Colour. / After her parents and Robot dog are crucified by an Alien with odd genitals, schoolgirl Poemi Watanabe (Kobayashi) moves in with her friend ...
Sky Crawlers
Japanese animated film (2008). Production I.G, Polygon Pictures. Directed by Mamoru Oshii. Written by Chihiro Itō. Cast includes Ryō Kase, Rinko Kikuchi, Chiaki Kuriyama and Shōsuke Tanihara. 122 minutes. Colour. / In a world at peace, humanity's belligerent instincts find an outlet in a televised aerial Future War managed by competing private corporations (see ...
Martin, Graham Dunstan
(1932-2021) Scottish academic (lecturer in French at Edinburgh University), translator, philologist and author who began publishing work of genre interest with the Giftwish children's fantasy sequence: Giftwish (1978) and Catchfire (1981), both as Graham Martin. With The Soul Master (1984), as Martin, he moved sf-wards; though the godling-dominated land of Tethesta is described in terms of fantasy. There are ...
Wise, David
(1930-2018) US author and journalist, with the New York Herald-Tribune in the 1950s and 1960s, whose works include both fiction and nonfiction about espionage and US politics. Of sf interest is The Samarkand Dimension (1987), a spy thriller in which Soviet sabotage of a US ICBM launch test has disastrous results and is ascribed to Psi Powers, the enemy having overridden the course controls via Telekinesis. The ...
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 ...