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
Sponsor of the day: John Howard
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 ...
Karinthy, Ferenc
(1921-1992) Hungarian author, the son of Frigyes Karinthy; of his wide output, which is primarily nonfantastic and focuses mostly on Hungarian life in the twentieth century, one novel is of some sf interest (see Fantastika). The linguist protagonist (see Linguistics) of Epepe (1970; trans George Szirtes as Metropole 2008) finds ...
Murdoch, Temple
(? -? ) UK author of fiction for boys. The eponymous Villain of Vull the Invisible! (24 November 1934-23 February 1935 Ranger; 1936 chap) uses Invisibility to do evil. [JC/RR] see also: Boys' Friend Library; Boys' Papers. /
Powe, Bruce
(1925-2018) Canadian author whose sf novels concentrate on political disorders, a theme very common to post-World War Two writers from his country. Killing Ground: The Canadian Civil War (1968) as by Ellis Portal sets its fatal conflict in Near Future Canada, where separatist unrest leads to Quebec's independence and an American Invasion of Canada, which is repelled. ...
Forster, E M
(1879-1970) UK author, perhaps best known for the last two novels published in his lifetime, Howards End (1910) and A Passage to India (1924). The Celestial Omnibus, and Other Stories (coll 1911) assembles several fantasies of interest, usually driven by the presence of deities like Pan or Hermes, fatally etiolated after the Edwardian fashion, though in fact the title novelette,"The Celestial Omnibus" (January 1908 Albany Review), is itself a ...
Robinson, Roger
(1943- ) UK computer programmer, bibliographer and publisher, active in UK Fandom for many years. The Writings of Henry Kenneth Bulmer (1983 chap; rev 1984 chap) is an exhaustive Bibliography of one of the most prolific sf writers, Kenneth Bulmer, and Who's Hugh?: An SF Reader's Guide to Pseudonyms (1987) is similarly exhaustive in its ...