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 ...
Samuel, Horace B
(1883-1950) UK lawyer, translator and author, in active service during World War One, whose Modernities (coll 1913) contains vivid studies of contemporary literary figures; in his Scientific Romance The Quisto-Box (1925), the consequences of the Invention of the "Telepathoscope", a mind-reading Machine, are ...
Hassaurek, F
(1832-1885) Austrian-born newspaper owner and author in the USA, fleeing there after the revolutions of 1848; he sometimes gave his given name as Frederick. He was the United States minister to Ecuador 1861-1865, an experience which may have inspired his unremarkable Lost Race novel, The Secret of the Andes: A Romance (1879), which focuses on a hidden band of Incas in their mountain redoubt. [JC]
Scientist [music]
Working name of Jamaican reggae engineer/producer Hopeton Overton Brown (1960- ). Initially working as an engineer at Studio One, he subsequently joined King Tubby's studio, then – in 1982 – Channel One. Scientist engineered many reggae tracks, but in the 1980s also began releasing dub albums, some of genre interest (see SF Music). / From the late 1960s the B-sides of Jamaican reggae singles would often be instrumental versions ...
Archer, William
(1856-1924) Scottish critic, translator and playwright, an important reformer of the near-moribund English theatre through his translations of Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906), through his critical essays assembled in Masks or Faces? (coll 1888) and elsewhere, and through his alliance with George Bernard Shaw. He is of minor sf interest for a late play, The Green Goddess: A Play in Four Acts (performed Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 1920; ...
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 ...