SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Wednesday 15 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 ...
Lott, Tim
(1956- ) UK memoirist and author of a Young Adult sf novel, Fearless (2007), set in a Near Future Dystopian Britain and tracing the rebellion of a girl, one of a thousand incarcerated within the sweatshop-like City Community Faith School, though her description of her ordeal is disbelieved in the corroded world outside the walls. [JC]
Sonin, Ray
Working name of UK scriptwriter, journalist, radio broadcaster and author Zola Sonin (1907-1991), in Canada from 1957. He published several nonfantastic thrillers, and is of sf interest for his contribution to the "Space" Kingley Shared World sequence, The Adventures of Captain "Space" Kingley (coll 1952), which enjoyably presents standard-fare Space Opera for children. There is ...
Piper, H Beam
(1904-1964) US author and gun collector, employed as a security man on the Pennsylvania Railroad until made redundant in the mid-1950s. Though he wrote for other genres, he is best remembered for his sf, much of which appeared in Astounding from 1947, when he began with "Time and Time Again" (April 1947 Astounding). Though he shared John W Campbell Jr's views on various fields of interest, including ...
Hughes, Matthew
(1949- ) UK-born author, in Canada from a very early age, who has also published, under slightly unfocused variations of his name, some non-fantastic work as Matt Hughes and as Hugh Matthews. He began to publish short crime fiction as early as 1982, publishing short work of genre interest only well after releasing the Fillidor Vesh series – one of the several groups of stories and novels making up the overarching Archonate sequence – and ...
Nicholls, Peter
(1939-2018) Australian editor and author, primarily a critic and historian of sf through his creation and editing of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction [see below]; resident in the UK 1970-1988, in Australia from 1988; worked as an academic in English literature (1962-1968, 1971-1977), scripted television documentaries, was a Harkness Fellow in Film-making (1968-1970) in the USA, worked as a publisher's editor (1982-1983), often broadcast film and book reviews on BBC Radio from 1974 and ...