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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 ...
Ahern, Jerry
Working name of US author Jerome Morrell Ahern (1946-2012), most of whose output consisted of violent Weapons-oriented Post-Holocaust novels, most notably in his Survivalist sequence, in which ex-CIA agent John Rourke attempts to preserve his family after a global nuclear conflict. This is perhaps the most influential series in the subgenre of Survivalist Fiction. The first arc of the ...
Maughan, Tim
(1973- ) Scottish journalist and author now resident in Canada, who began to publish work of genre interest with "Havana Augmented" in Ergosphere (anth 2010) edited by Rick Novy; Paintwork (coll 2011), assembles three post-Cyberpunk stories dominated by Maughan's exceedingly alert sense of twenty-first developments in online Technology (see Internet) and ...
Benoist, Elizabeth S
(1901-1999) US author in whose sf novel, Doomsday Clock (1975), a passel of disparate characters takes refuge from nuclear Holocaust in a very deep and luxurious Underground bomb shelter, where they tell each other tales (see Club Story) and prepare, in all likelihood, to die. [JC]
Aickman, Robert
(1914-1981) UK journalist,editor, campaigner and author almost none of whose significant work – the tales he often referred to in subtitles and various comments as "Strange Stories" – remotely resembles sf, though much of it can be described as Fantastika. The power of this work derives from a consummate avoidance of any assured generic status; though many of his tales can be approached as ghost stories (even when no ghost, or any other ...
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 ...