SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Monday 20 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
Sponsor of the day: Paul Giamatti
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 ...
Bingham, Roger
(1948- ) UK Television host and author, in US for most of his career, during which he hosted several popular science television series. He is of sf interest for the imaginative Near Future Technothriller, Wild Card (1974; rev 1988) with Raymond Hawkey (whom see for details). The several verisimilitudinous descriptions of ...
Dianetics
According to its adherents a science, according to its disbelievers a Pseudoscience, founded by L Ron Hubbard, at the time a pulp writer whose main market was the sf magazines. Hubbard's sf had always emphasized the powers of the mind and deployed protagonists who maintained to the end a heroic stance against a corrupt Universe. The former interest was translated into real-life terms in the late 1940s, and the latter vision ...
Winnacker, Susanne
(? - ) US author whose first novel, The Other Life (2012), which begins the Weepers sequence, is a Near Future Young Adult Dystopian novel whose young romantically-involved protagonists, initially confined in an Underground Keep because of a deadly virus outdoors, eventually reach the ...
First Fandom
Informal fan organization founded in 1959 by Bob Madle and Don Ford, originally confined to those active in Fandom prior to 1 January 1938. Owing to the inevitable attrition of these "golden era" or "dinosaur" fans, associate membership has for many years been available to anyone participating in fan activities (including Fanzines, Conventions and sf clubs) for 30 or more years. Two awards are presented. ...
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 ...