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Thursday 16 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 ...
Karam, Balsam
(1983- ) Iranian-born author, in Sweden from 1990, whose first novel, Händelsehorisonten (2018; trans Saski Vogel as Event Horizon 2026), is set in a Dystopian Near Future world psychotically disruptive to anyone seen as unsupportive; the protagonist, arrested for this form of passive resistance (see Crime and Punishment), chooses a ...
Brex, J Twells
(1873-1920) UK journalist and author, active from the 1890s, some of his work being contributed to Boys' Papers; The Civil War of 1915 (1912) describes a Near Future class war in Britain. "Scare-Mongerings" from the Daily Mail 1896-1914: The Paper That Foretold the War (anth 1914 chap) assembles claimed Predictions of World War One, some ...
Buis, Lela E
(? - ) US author who has also written as by L Crittenden and Lee Crittenden; she began to publish work of genre interest with "GP Venture" as by L Crittenden in Abortion Stories: Fiction on Fire (anth 1992) edited by Rick Lawler, assembling her short work in collections beginning with Desperate Lives (coll 2013), which was gathered together with other volumes as Moonshadows: A Collection of Short Stories (omni ...
Buckner, M M
(? - ) US author and environmental activist (she has done work for the World Wildlife Fund) whose first three sf novels are set on an exceedingly grim but realistic planet Earth, though her excessively intricate plotting tends to divert attention from the harshness of the Near Future/moderately distant future she posits. HyperThought (2001) and War Surf (2005) – the latter won the ...
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 ...