SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Saturday 18 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: David Cowhig
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 ...
Preston, H
Pseudonym used for fiction by US technical author Henry Preston Nail (1931-2012), author of Project Deep Space (2000), set in the moderately distant Near Future as private corporations finally provide the impetus to launch Homo sapiens into interstellar space; the Invention of successively more efficient Spaceship drives is focused upon. [JC]
X-Com
Videogame series (from 1994). Mythos Games (MG). Designed by Julian Gollop. / UFO: Enemy Unknown (1994 MG, CD32, DOS; 1995 Amiga, PS1; 1998 Win; vt X-COM: UFO Defense US) designed by Julian Gollop, the first X-COM game, puts a single player in the position of leading Earth's defence against marauding Aliens. This background is clearly influenced by the UK television series UFO ...
Ottum, Bob
(1925-1986) US sports author and author who began publishing work of genre interest with "She Called Me Frankie" in Science Fiction Quarterly for May 1953. In his surprisingly funny sf novel, All Right, Everybody Off the Planet (1972), inefficient Aliens send a spy among us in human form; the Humour derives from their ignorance of human relationships and from their attempts to ...
Incredible Science Fiction [comic]
US Comic (1955-1956). EC Comics. 4 issues (numbered #30-#33). Artists include Jack Davis, Bernie Krigstein, Joe Orlando and Wallace Wood. Script authors include Al Feldstein and Jack Oleck. 4 comic strips and a short text story per issue. / Issue #30 opens with "Clean Start": the Solar Federation, worried by our bloodthirsty nature, has sent two Scientists to alter ...
Nicholls, Peter
(1939-2018) Australian editor and author, primarily a critic and historian of sf through his creation and editing of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction [see below]; resident in the UK 1970-1988, in Australia from 1988; worked as an academic in English literature (1962-1968, 1971-1977), scripted television documentaries, was a Harkness Fellow in Film-making (1968-1970) in the USA, worked as a publisher's editor (1982-1983), often broadcast film and book reviews on BBC Radio from 1974 and ...