SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Tuesday 21 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 ...
Pollard, Capt A O
(1893-1960) UK soldier and author, not simultaneously. In active combat throughout World War One, he was repeatedly honoured, and in 1917 was awarded the Victoria Cross; active from 1930. His war memoir, Fire-Eater: The Memoirs of a VC (1932), has been likened, because of its almost surreal buoyancy in the face of apocalypse, to the work of Ernst Jünger, though it lacks any philosophical ambition. In his ...
Frankau, Pamela
(1908-1967) UK author who began publishing novels in 1927; daughter of Gilbert Frankau and his first wife Dorothea; known mainly for her work outside the sf field. Frankau's turbulent life was in some aspects interestingly parallel to that of James Tiptree Jr, though she did not disguise her identity. Several of her novels, such as The Bridge (1957), are fantasy; The Offshore Light (1952; ...
Lehr, Paul
(1930-1998) American artist. Lehr studied illustration at the prestigious Pratt Institute, where he worked under Stanley Meltzoff, an early influence on his art. His first sf cover – for the American edition of Jeffery Lloyd Castle's Satellite E One (1954) – is a realistic depiction of the construction of an unusually-shaped Space Station, and similar ...
Magrs, Paul
(1969- ) UK academic. Radio playwright and author, some of whose early nonseries fiction is nonfantastic, though To the Devil – a Diva! (2004) is about a horror film star, ageless through a Pact with the Devil [see The Encyclopedia of Fantasy under links below], who threatens chaos when she re-ignites her career in a transgressive soap opera. Of more direct sf ...
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 ...