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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.
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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 ...
Hightower, Lynn S
(1956- ) US author of crime novels, like the Sonora Blair sequence beginning with Eyeshot (1986), and of sf, primarily the David Silver/Elaki sequence comprising Alien Blues (1992), Alien Eyes (1993), Alien Heat (1994) and Alien Rites (1995). Except for the presence of an Alien sidekick, and plots generated by interactions between sleuth Silver and the Elaki, the ...
Jennison, John W
(1911-1980) UK author, one of several who became active as mass-producers of genre fiction for UK paperback houses and who remained reticent about personal details during their careers. From about 1945 to the year in which it is thought he may have died, Jennison seems to have written over 100 novels under at least forty pseudonyms, mostly thrillers and Westerns; he began to publish routine but occasionally engaging sf with two novels as Edgar Rees Kennedy, ...
1984
Film (1955). Holiday Film Productions. Directed by Michael Anderson. Written by William P Templeton, Ralph Bettinson, based on Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) by George Orwell. Cast includes Edmond O'Brien, Donald Pleasence, Michael Redgrave and Jan Sterling. 91 minutes. Black and white. / After the success of a 1954 BBC TV production of Nineteen Eighty-Four, scripted by Nigel ...
Delaney, Joseph H
(1932-1999) US lawyer and author, associated through most of his career with Analog, for which magazine he began publishing sf with "Brainchild" in June 1982 (see Apes as Human). He made considerable impact with his second story, "In the Face of My Enemy" (April 1983 Analog), which became part of his first solo novel, In the Face of My Enemy (fixup 1985), a ...
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 ...