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Wednesday 22 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 ...
Everett, Percival
(1956- ) US academic and author, active from the early 1980s, whose novels variously and imaginatively press against mimetic readings; though most are nonfantastic, there is a sense that many of them pan the water margins of Fantastika. Several novels are of sf interest. In Zulus (1990), a Near Future tale set after the end of a nuclear World War Three, the ...
L'Estrange, Henry
Pseudonym of an unidentified late-nineteenth-century UK author (? - ) whose Platonia: A Tale of Other Worlds (1893) presents its narrator with an ancient design for a Spaceship which takes him to the planet Platonista, located this side of Mars, where an oddity of the atmosphere permits telescopic perusal of our world (see Time Viewer) as it was 100 ...
Midwinter
Videogame (1989). Maelstrom Games (MG). Designed by Mike Singleton. Platforms: AtariST (1989); Amiga, DOS (1990). / Midwinter is an unusual combination of real time Computer Role Playing Game and Computer Wargame, set on an isolated island in the aftermath of a devastating meteorite strike which has plunged ...
Jessica Jones
US online tv series (2015-2019). Tall Girls Productions in association with ABC Studios and Marvel Studios for Netflix. Created by Melissa Rosenberg. Adapted from the Marvel Max Comic book Alias by Brian Michael Bendis and Michael Gaydos (28 issues, 2001-2004). Writers include Ruth Atkinson, Dana Baratta, Brian Michael Bendis, Otto Binder, John Byrne, Chris Claremont, Liz Friedman, Michael Gaydos, Archie Goodwin, ...
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 ...