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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 ...
Meluch, R M
(1956- ) US author whose first novel, Sovereign (1979), shows a competent grasp of the conventions and venues of sf adventure while at the same time refracting traditional material through an unusually complex protagonist, who is the precarious culmination of a Genetic Engineering programme haunted by the continuing image of his first enemy: his own father. There are, perhaps, too many additional enemies for ...
Orlacs Hände
1. Austrian film (1924; vt The Hands of Orlac). Pan Film. Directed by Robert Wiene. Written by Louis Nerz, based on Les mains d'Orlac (15 May-12 July 1920 L'Intransigeant; 1921; trans as The Hands of Orlac 1929; new trans 1981) by Maurice Renard. Cast includes Carmen Cartellieri, Fritz Kortner, Alexandra Sorina and Conrad Veidt. 92 minutes, cut to 70 minutes. Black and ...
Curwen, Henry
(1846-1892) UK critic, journalist and author, in India from 1876, where he became editor of the Times of India. He was an early sympathetic critic of Edgar Allan Poe. Zit and Xoe: Their Early Experience (April-May 1885 Blackwood's Magazine; 1887) is a tale of Prehistoric SF told in terms of the theory of Evolution, in which two advanced apes (see ...
Knigge, Adolph von
(1752-1796) German lawyer and author, best known for a work anachronistically perhaps well described as a study in the sociology of manners, Über den Umgang mit Menschen ["On Human Relations"] (1788), which was soon understood and referred to as a guide to good manners. Though soon widely known, Knigge attempted to disguise his authorship of his novels, almost invariably cast as Satires, an early example of which is ...
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 ...