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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 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 ...
Willett, John
(1932-2001) US author, editor and art critic (for the San Diego Metropolitan 1996-1999), who began to publish genre fiction with the children's fantasy novella The Singer in the Stone (1981 chap), in which a Sleeper Awakes and a future world is changed. Willett is of direct sf interest for Aubade for Gamelon (1984), a somewhat ponderous treatment of the trope of superhuman Mutants who have ...
Tarnacre, Robert
Pseudonym of UK author Robert Cartmell (1877-? ) in whose Lost Race tale, Beyond the Swamps (1929), a British patrol boat explores an unknown backwater, upstream from which an intact ancient Roman civilization discovered, and is soon brought to heel under the civilizing influence of Empire discipline. [JC]
Nathan, David
(1926-2001) UK author of The Story So Far (1986), in which the Near Future world is depicted as terminally suffering from human failures in the understanding and application of Ecology. [JC]
Lyle, Eugene P, Jr
(1873-1962) US journalist and author, whose The Great War of 1938 (September 1918 Everybody's Magazine; 1918 chap) predicts with unusual accuracy the onset of World War Two, though its propagandist thesis for readers in September 1918 – that Germany would take advantage of any weak peace terms laid down after its coming defeat in World War One – was very wide of the mark. An earlier nonfiction ...
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 ...