SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Tuesday 21 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 20 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 ...
Lek, Lawrence
(1982- ) German-born, UK-based artist, filmmaker, musician and Videogame designer, of Malaysian Chinese heritage. His game designs, video works and installations have been mostly set in his "Sinofuturist" universe, a world shaped and then largely abandoned by sentient AI. Lek's engagement with this future extends to innovative blurring between different media and platforms; as an example, NOX (2023-2025) ...
Guran, Paula
(? - ) US editor, reviewer, anthologist, agent, and columnist heavily involved in many aspects of the genre since the 1990s, specializing in dark fantasy. She produced and edited the pioneering weekly email newsletter DarkEcho (which won International Horror Guild awards as best publication in 1998 and 1999, and a Bram Stoker award for nonfiction in 1999), and was editor of Horror Garage magazine from 2000-2002. / She has contributed ...
Second Hundred Years, The
US tv series (1967-1968). Screen Gem Television for ABC-TV. Produced by Bob Claver, Richard M Bluel. Directors included Gene Reynolds, Russ Mayberry, Jud Taylor. Writers included Stan Cutler, Skip Webster. Cast includes Monte Markham, Frank Maxwell and Arthur O'Connell. 26 30-minute episodes. Colour. / This sf comedy series was in the vein of similar efforts of the era such as My Living Doll (1964-1965), and ...
Valdes, Valerie
(? - ) US author who began to publish work of genre interest with "Shub-Niggurath's Witnesses" in She Walks in Shadows (anth 2015) edited by Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Paula R Stiles (see Cthulhu Mythos). She is more direct sf interest for the Eva Innocente sequence of Space Operas beginning with Chilling Effect ...
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 ...