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Wednesday 22 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 ...
Loontown
US live-action and animated film (2023). Positronish Productions. Directed by Nir Yaniv. Written by Lavie Tidhar. Cast includes Kenneth Jay, Al Lubel, Digger Mesch, Nathan Osgood, Katie Snyder, Russell Wilcox and Anne Wittman. 18 minutes. Colour. / Jokingly described by its creators as "The Citizen Kane of balloon noir movies" (itself a reference to the Boston Globe's description of Bobcat Goldthwait's ...
Aimard, Gustave
Pseudonym of French author Olivier Gloux (1818-1883), author of a large number of adventures set in the American West, many of them published in English in the Aimard's Tales of Indian Life sequence. Of those translated into English, two have been noted as being of genre interest: L'Eclaireur (1859; trans Lascelles Wraxall as The Indian Scout: A Story of the Aztec City 1861), a Lost Race tale; and L'Araucan (undated; ...
Yaniv, Nir
(1972- ) Israeli musician, editor, occasional film-maker and author, most influential as the editor of the Israeli Society for Science Fiction and Fantasy website, which he created and built into Israel's first significant online SF Magazine, at a time when none existed. He also edited several issues of the print magazine Chalomot Be'aspamia, following the departure of long-serving editor Vered ...
Latin America
The Latin America entry in the 1993 edition of this encyclopedia was divided into sections on individual countries – now replaced by more specific international entries for each country or region within or linked to Latin America and Iberia, as well as detailed entries for selected authors. Relevant international entries are Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Catalan SF, ...
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 ...