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Thursday 16 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 ...
Welles, Paul O'M
(? - ) US author of Project Lambda (1979), a Near Future Dystopian Satire set in an America where homosexual men are first murdered and then – after the government sees an opportunity to publicly humiliate any survivors – sent to concentration camps where they will be castrated; but public outrage saves the day. [JC]
Potter, Robert
(1831-1908) Irish-born author and clergyman, in Australia from early manhood; his sf novel The Germ Growers: An Australian Story of Adventure and Mystery (1892; vt The Germ Growers: The Strange Adventures of Robert Easterley and John Wilbraham 1892) was published in Australia as by Robert Easterley and John Wilbraham, the names of the protagonists, but in the UK as "edited by" Potter. A race of discarnate beings, denizens of the ...
MacCloud, Malcolm
(? - ) US author of two sf juveniles for Young Adult readers. The Tera Beyond (1981) is a thriller set on the planet Tera, where a student makes the Discovery, at the risk of his freedom, that microbes are inherently dual in nature, suggesting the existence of Parallel Worlds. Rather similarly, though less plausibly, A Gift of Mirrorvax ...
Borgo Press
Former US publishing house, a Small Press which long maintained a fairly extensive list of works of interest to sf. Its name is a play on "Borgo Pass," the name for Romania's Tihuţa Pass used in Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897; rev with cuts 1901). Originally based in California, the company was founded in 1975 by Robert Reginald, as publisher and ...
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 ...