SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Sunday 19 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 ...
Gotlieb, Phyllis
(1926-2009) Canadian author who may be best known for her Poetry, some of which – such as the long performable poems assembled in Doctor Umlaut's Earthly Kingdom (coll 1974) – is strongly fantastic. She took an MA with the University of Toronto in English language and literature, and married a professor of computer science, whom she credited for assistance on her second sf novel. She began publishing sf with "A Grain of Manhood" in ...
Hunt, Walter H
(1959- ) US computer programmer and author whose Dark Wing sequence of Military SF adventures – comprising The Dark Wing (2001), The Dark Path (2003), The Dark Ascent (2004) and The Dark Crusade (2005) – traverses an unusually long time-span from the first volume, featuring the dominating human admiral nicknamed the Black Wing who sacrifices himself to resolve the ...
Sernine, Daniel
Pseudonym of Canadian author Alain Lortie (1955- ), a central force in Canadian sf, who began publishing in 1975 with the dark fantasies "Jalbert" and "La Bouteille" ["The Bottle"] for Requiem 5, later serving (from 1983) on the editorial collective of that magazine, now renamed Solaris (see Canada). His early work was collected in Les Contes de l'ombre ["Tales from the Shadow"] (coll ...
McConnell, Frank
(1942-1999) US academic and critic, a professor of English at Northwestern University and the University of California, Santa Barbara, who wrote extensively on sf and many other subjects; his writings included a regular media column for Commonweal magazine and four detective novels, and he served four times on the committee that awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. His work in the genre included editing The Time Machine/The War of the Worlds: A Critical Edition (omni ...
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 ...