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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.
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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 ...
Miller, P Schuyler
(1912-1974) US critic, amateur archaeologist and author; an MSc in chemistry, he did research for a time and from 1952 until his death worked as a technical writer. He remains best known in the sf world for his book reviews in Astounding Science-Fiction, which first appeared in 1945 and became a regular monthly feature in October 1951 under a surtitle, The Reference Library, and continued until his death, the last instalment appearing in January 1975. He was not ...
Magnus, Leonard A
(1879-1924) UK linguist, author, translator and textual scholar who specialized in Russian literature; of sf interest is A Japanese Utopia (1905), whose Japanese protagonist finds, in a Lost World north of Japan, an advanced, benignly anarchic Utopia. According to his Times obituary he died after, while travelling through Russia collecting folktales and folklore for a forthcoming book, he was "attacked by a ...
Wilde, Oscar
(1854-1900) Irish journalist, playwright, poet and author, mostly in UK from 1874; noted for the witty epigrams which characterize much of his writing. Among his most enduring works are his social comedy plays, such as Lady Windermere's Fan (first performed 20 February 1892; 1893) and especially The Importance of Being Earnest (first performed 14 February 1895; 1898). Of primary genre interest is his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray (July 1890 ...
Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri
Videogame (1999). Firaxis Games (FG). Designed by Brian Reynolds, Sid Meier. Platforms: Win (1999); Mac (2000); Lin (2001). / Alpha Centauri is a 4X Game based on an attempt to colonize the eponymous solar system. It is much influenced by the designers' Civilization series of historical games, particularly Sid Meier's Civilization II (1996 ...
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 ...