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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 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 ...
Lucas, F L
(1894-1967) UK author and critic, better known in the latter capacity; his criticism, though sharp-minded, fought fatally shy of twentieth-century thought. He was in active service throughout World War One, and was involved during World War Two in the Ultra code-breaking project at Bletchley Park. Of his fiction, The Woman Clothed with the Sun and Other Stories (coll of linked stories 1937), like much of the work of F Britten ...
My Greatest Adventure
US Comic (1955-1964; 2011), published by DC Comics. Monthly. Writers included Arnold Drake and Bob Haney. Artists included Mort Mesklin, Jim Mooney, Ruben Moreira, and Alex Toth. Its unrelated stories, in keeping with the comic's title, were always narrated by their protagonists. / In its early issues, the comic featured the realistic adventures of rugged he-men in exotic locales, similar to the stories ...
Lancour, Gene
Working name of Gene Louis Fisher (1947- ), US author of the Sword-and-Sorcery Dirshan, the God-Killer sequence featuring a barbarian warrior strenuously in the service of a goddess: The Lerios Mecca (1973), The War Machines of Kalinth (1977), Sword for the Empire (1978) and The Maneaters of Cascalon (1979). Lancour's next book was sf: The Globes of Llarum ...
Protheroe, Cyril
(1899-1964) UK aeronautical engineer and engineer's instructor who was the son of the prolific children's author Ernest Protheroe (1865-1929) and reportedly published more than one short sf novel. The only confirmed example is Beyond These Suns (1952), for Curtis Warren under that publisher's House Name Rand Le Page. In this routine Space Flight ...
Langford, David
(1953- ) UK author, critic, editor, publisher and sf fan, in the latter capacity recipient of 21 Hugo awards for fan writing – some of the best of his several hundred pieces are assembled as Let's Hear It for the Deaf Man (coll 1992 chap US; much exp vt The Silence of the Langford 1996; exp 2015 ebook) as Dave Langford, edited by Ben Yalow – plus five Best Fanzine Hugos ...