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Tuesday 14 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 more than 180 short stories since 1969 at a gradually increasing tempo and with visibly ...
Salonen, Esa-Pekka
(1958- ) Finnish classical musician and composer. Though better known as an orchestral conductor, Salonen has composed a number of sf-influenced works, amongst them ... auf den ersten blick und ohne zu wissen ... ["... at first sight and without knowing ..."] (1980) based on the work of Franz Kafka (from whose Der Prozess [1925; trans as The Trial 1937 UK] its title is quoted), and most notably ...
Künsken, Derek
(1971- ) Canadian author who began publishing work of genre interest with "Tidal Maneuvers" in On Spec for Fall 2006. Most of his later work fits into two connected Hard SF series. The Quantum Universe sequence beginning with The Quantum Magician (January-May 2018 Analog; 2018) follows the life and exploits of a ...
Lesson, The
Armenia animated film (1987). Armenfilm. Directed and written by Robert Sahakyants. 17 minutes. Colour. / The first passenger-carrying starship (see Spaceships) lands on a planet whose flora and fauna mostly resemble portmanteaus of Earth species (see Life on Other Worlds). The trigger-happy tourists begin hunting them, only to find the dead ...
Kelley, William Melvin
(1937-2017) US author whose celebrated short novel A Different Drummer (1959) is an sf fable telling of Black history in an imaginary town in an imagined southern state of the USA (see Race in SF), and ending with a mass emigration of all Blacks from this state in 1957. The isolation of this town [for Polder see The Encyclopedia of Fantasy under links below] is reminiscent of 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 ...