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Monday 20 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 ...
Hooker, Ruth
(1920-1998) US author of books for Young Adult readers and younger children, whose Kennaquhair (1976) follows six children who leave a Ruined Earth urban environment and find a pastoral enclave, where a guru named Olmun [ie Old Man] teaches them how to adjust with loving kindness to the new world. [JC]
Neptune Factor, The
Film (1973; vt Conquest of the Deeps). Quadrant Films/20th Century Fox Film Corporation. Produced by Sandy Howard. Directed by Daniel Petrie. Written by Jack DeWitt. Cast includes Ernest Borgnine, Ben Gazzara, Yvette Mimieux and Walter Pidgeon. 98 minutes. Colour. / Oceanlab, a laboratory Under the Sea off the eastern coast of Canada, slides into a deep abyss after an earthquake, trapping its three-man crew with only a seven-day supply of ...
Hall, George Rome
(1864-1938) UK author of a Future War tale, The Black Fortnight; Or, the Invasion of 1915 (1904), Germany being the invader. [JC]
Uplift
This term, both noun and verb, has entered the sf vocabulary, partly it may be to dodge the implications of, or simply to overleap, the kind of applied Eugenics that marks, for instance, the Arisians' breeding of an Aryan super race to rule the galaxies in E E Smith's Lensman series. Perhaps less toxically, a Secret Master race of advanced humans enacts ...
Clute, John
(1940- ) Canadian critic, editor and author, in the UK from 1969; married to Judith Clute from 1964, partner of Elizabeth Hand since 1996. He began to publish work of genre interest with an sf-tinged poem "Carcajou Lament" in Triquarterly for Winter 1960 [ie Autumn 1959]; he began consistently publishing sf reviews in his "New Fiction" column for the Toronto Star (1966-1967), and later in ...