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Tuesday 14 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 13 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 more than 180 short stories since 1969 at a gradually increasing tempo and with visibly ...
Morton, A S
(1862-1900) US poet and author of a Lost Race novel, Beyond the Palæocrystic Sea: Or, the Legend of Halfjord (1895), set in the permanent (ie palaeocrystic) ice around the North Pole, where an extremely non-monogamous Norse culture seems to thrive, though hints of a Hollow Earth are never fulfilled, and they must hunt to eat. Much of the book is devoted to a potted historical romance about ninth-century ...
Fugitive Futurist, The
UK short silent film (1924). Subtitled A Q-riosity by "Q.". Hepworth. Directed and written by Gaston Quiribet. Cast unknown. 12 minutes. Black and white. / As a forlorn gambler mulls over his losses after a day's horse racing, he is approached by a self-proclaimed inventor carrying a package: within, apparently, is a Machine "based on the idea that by amplifying the particular vibrations of the ether, termed vision, one is able to see beyond ...
Yates, Dornford
Pseudonym of UK lawyer and author Cecil William Mercer (1885-1960), Saki's first cousin; in active service during World War One, 1914-1917, and in World War Two; in France and Africa from the early 1920s. Some short stories in his well-known and once very popular Berry sequence of English social comedies contain fantasy elements, including dowsing (see ESP), ...
Taylor, W T
(? -? ) UK author of fiction for boys, who also wrote as by John Bredon and Dave Gregory. Lord of the Incas (7 July-6 October 1934 Ranger; 1935) as by Dave Gregory is a Lost Race tale set in South America; in the Near Future The Great Disaster: A Story of 2000 A.D. (1935 chap) as by John Bredon, Britain suffers under a dictatorship and a ...
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 ...