SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Saturday 18 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 ...
Buckley-Archer, Linda
(1958- ) UK scriptwriter for BBC Radio and Television, and author of the Young Adult Gideon Trilogy beginning with Gideon the Cutpurse (2006), where sf devices – Antigravity and a Time Machine – are utilized in the frame story and throughout, initially to transport its young protagonists ...
Dylan, Bob
Pseudonym of US folk singer-songwriter, filmmaker and author Robert Allen Zimmerman (1941- ) until 2 August 1962, now legally Bob Dylan; one of the central figures of post-war popular culture, whose seemingly boundless lyrical invention, erudition and wit made him the only songwriter to have won the Nobel Prize for Literature, in 2016. On numerous occasions during his early career, his lyrics have evoked apocalyptic imagery of both a ...
Stern, Dave
(1958- ) US author almost exclusively as a contributor of Ties to various series universes, including some associated with Marvel Comics and Star Trek, the first of these being Dr Bones #5: Nightmare World (1989), part of a Shared World series about the eponymous archaeologist/adventurer in space, clearly influenced by Stephen ...
Kyme, Nick
(? - ) UK editor and author, involved in Games journalism and other functions from 1998; his sf novels are Ties to Games Workshop Wargame universes, beginning with Necromunda: Back from the Dead (2006) and continuing with a Warhammer novel, Warhammer: Oathbreaker (2008), and several for the more heavily sf-oriented ...
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 ...