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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 ...
Fortune, Margaret
(? - ) US author whose Young Adult sf novel, Nova (2015), opens a projected five-book sequence. The young protagonist, suffering Amnesia, must discover her true nature and how to love while restricted to a giant Space Station, where she has arrived after involvement in an interstellar war waged by Earth to gain access to an inhabitable world (see ...
Levene, Philip
(1926-1973) UK scriptwriter and credited co-author of City of the Hidden Eyes (1960) with J L Morrissey, based on Levene's eight-part BBC Radio serial from 27 April 1959, in which the surface world is threatened by Monsters who occupy a City far Underground; it is likely that adaptation of script to novel was entirely by Morrissey. ...
Kantor, MacKinlay
(1904-1977) US author best known for such works outside the sf field as Andersonville (1955), a long novel set during the US Civil War, the area of his deepest concern. That war is also the setting for If the South Had Won the Civil War (22 November 1960 Look; 1961; exp as coll 2001), the Alternate-History thesis of the title being a favourite crux for US writers in the genre; the ...
Gregson, Maureen
(? - ) UK author who was the principal writer of two novelizations Tied to the BBC Television serial 1990 (1977-1978). These were 1990 (1977) with Wilfred Greatorex and 1990: Book 2 (1978) with Greatorex and Edmund Ward, who between them wrote most of the episode scripts. [DRL] works / / ...
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 ...