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Wednesday 15 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 ...
Startopia
Videogame (2001). Mucky Foot Productions. Platforms: Win. / Startopia is a God Game set on a series of derelict space stations which the player must rebuild after an interstellar war. The developers had previously been part of Peter Molyneux's Bullfrog Productions (BP), and the design is much influenced by such non sf Molyneux games as ...
Gineste, Raoul
Pseudonym of French journalist, poet and author Adolph Augier (1852-1914), whose sf novel, La seconde vie du docteur Albin (1902; trans Brian Stableford as The Second Life of Doctor Albin 2016), follows the investigations of the eponymous Scientist into the nature of the scientific mind; these investigations, which lead to the reanimation of his severed head (see ...
Crawford, Theron Clark
(1849-1925) US entrepreneur (involved with various Buffalo Bill enterprises), journalist and (apparently) Theosophist (see Theosophy), active circa 1885-1925; from about 1898 he was based mainly in London. The protagonist of A Man and His Soul: An Occult Romance of Washington Life (1894) finds himself semi-occultly able to glimpse the future of America, a quasi-Utopia dominated by advances in technology. The title ...
Steve Miller Band, The
US rock group formed by Steve Miller (1947- ), whose first album Children of the Future (1968) strung a varied portfolio of blues and psychedelic songs along a vaguely future-oriented sf conceit. "Brave New World" (on Brave New World, 1969) is not a version of Aldous Huxley's novel, and indeed develops an unironized Utopian vision. "Space Cowboy" from the same album saw Miller ...
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 ...