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
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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 ...
Weinbaum, Batya
Working name of US critic, academic, poet, editor and author Betty Susan Weinbaum (1952- ), most of her work being focused on women's studies (see Feminism) within and without the regions of Speculative Fiction, or more broadly Fantastika. She founded and edits the feminist journal Femspec, which publishes fiction and nonfiction, also editing a ...
Wearmouth, Darren A
(? - ) UK author with his brother Marcus Wearmouth of the Activation sequence of Near Future post-Disaster thrillers beginning with First Activation (2011), set initially in a New York dominated by Zombie-like minions of a tyrannical organization bent on reshaping America. Protagonist duties are shared by two ...
Davis, Phil
(? - ) US author of a Technothriller, Nemesis (1979), whose hero keeps ultimate Disaster at bay. [JC]
Human League, The
UK pop band, formed in 1977 by Martyn Ware (1946- ) and Philip Oakley (1955- ). They took their name from one of the alliances listed in the sf boardgame Starforce: Alpha Centauri, and the early releases featured occasional genre realizations. Their second album Travelogue (1980) included, for instance, "The Black Hit of Space" and a song in praise of the then ...
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 ...