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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 ...
Davies, Pete
(1959- ) UK advertising copywriter (until the mid 1980s) and author whose first novel, The Last Election (1986), depicts with singular ferocity a Near-Future Dystopian UK ruled by the Money Party and its senile Nanny, a savage portrait of the 1980s British prime minister, Margaret Thatcher; Overpopulation and the total loss of a manufacturing base lead to the ...
Card, Orson Scott
(1951- ) US author who began his adult life with activities befitting his faith – he worked as a Mormon missionary in Brazil, 1971-1973, an experience seemingly fictionalized to revealing effect in "America" (January 1987 Asimov's). He wrote several plays and other works with religious content before exploding onto the sf scene with his first published story of genre interest, "Ender's Game" in Analog for ...
Lee, Sharon
(1952- ) US author who began publishing work of genre interest with "A Matter of Ceremony" (May 1980 Amazing). Almost all her further work has been in collaboration with Steve Miller, their main endeavour being the extended Liaden Universe sequence of Space Opera tales, set in expansive (though not adventurously described) interstellar venues. The first three titles, ...
Cummings, M A
Working name of Mona A Cummings (1914-1999), US author of romances as Monette Cummings, and of short stories in various genres, her work of genre interest beginning with "The Brides of Ool" in Planet Stories in 1955. Her collection is Exile and Other Tales of Fantasy (coll 1968), which contains some Planetary Romances. [JC]
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 ...