SF Encyclopedia Home Page
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 ...
Lewis, Sinclair
(1885-1951) US author, highly esteemed in the 1920s and 1930s for such novels as Main Street (1920) and Babbitt (1922), and first US winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, in 1930; but his reputation had much diminished before his death, and has not recovered. Lewis's first novel, Hike and the Aeroplane (1912) as by Tom Graham, is a juvenile centred on the Invention of a futuristic 200mph ...
Kent, Kelvin
Pseudonym used on the Pete Manx series in Thrilling Wonder Stories (1939-1944), individually by Arthur K Barnes (four stories) and Henry Kuttner (six stories), and on the two they wrote in collaboration: "Roman Holiday" (August 1939 Thrilling Wonder) and "Science is Golden" (April 1940 Thrilling Wonder). [PN] links / ...
Marvel Comics
Eventually named for its first Comic – much as DC Comics was named after Detective Comics – Marvel was founded by Martin Goodman (1910-1992) as Timely Comics before, in the 1950s, being renamed Atlas Comics after its distribution company; it became Marvel Comics in 1963. Marvel Comics #1 (November 1939) featured two of the company's three early mainstays. The Human Torch was ...
Equipoise
1. In this encyclopedia Equipoise designates the active and conscious mixing or two or more genres within a single narrative, usually within a single narrative event rather than sequentially, in order to provide a multifaceted narrative take on action, character, motif, setting. The primary effect is sometimes aesthetic pleasure. But perhaps more interestingly, an Equipoisal narrative may reveal a world richer and ultimately more graspable than a world envisioned through a single lens. ...
Langford, David
(1953- ) UK author, critic, editor, publisher and sf fan, in the latter capacity recipient of 21 Hugo awards for fan writing – some of the best of his several hundred pieces are assembled as Let's Hear It for the Deaf Man (coll 1992 chap US; much exp vt The Silence of the Langford 1996; exp 2015 ebook) as Dave Langford, edited by Ben Yalow – plus five Best Fanzine Hugos ...