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Monday 20 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 20 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 ...
Frost, Jason
A Zebra Books House Name, used almost exclusively by US author Raymond Obstfeld for the Warlord sequence of Post-Holocaust sf adventures typical in theme and style of most Survivalist Fiction of the 1980s: The Warlord (1983), The Warlord #2: The Cutthroat (1984), The Warlord #3: Badland (1984), ...
Matzkin, M
(1924-2022) US author of The Outer Fleet (1978), a Space Opera in which a numerically insignificant sector of a Galactic Empire resists tyranny. [JC]
Greg, Percy
(1837-1889) UK poet, historian and author, son of the prolific essayist William Rathbone Greg (1809-1881); Greg also wrote as Lionel G Holdreth. His first work of genre interest is "Guy Neville's Ghost" for Blackwood's in March 1865; the nonfiction The Devil's Advocate (1878 2vols) contains some speculative material. His important early sf novel, Across the Zodiac: The Story of a Wrecked Record, Deciphered, Translated and Edited by P G (1880 2vols) (see ...
Nude on the Moon
Film (1961). Moon Productions. Directed by Raymond Phelan and Doris Wishman. Written by Raymond Phelan and Doris Wishman. Cast includes Lester Brown, Marietta and Walter Meyer. 83 minutes. Colour. / While waiting to hear whether the government will finance his proposed rocket to the Moon, brilliant young Scientist Jeff Huntley (Brown) inherits three million dollars from his uncle and tells his colleague and mentor, the ...
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 ...