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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.
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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 ...
Planetary Romance
Any sf tale whose primary venue (excluding contemporary or Near-Future versions of Earth) is a planet, and whose plot turns to a significant degree upon the nature of that venue, can be described as a planetary romance. For the term to apply properly, however, it is not enough that a tale simply be set on a world: James Blish's A Case of Conscience (September 1953 If; exp 1958), for instance, ...
Mobile Suit Gundam
Japanese animated tv series (1979-1980). Original title Kidō Senshi Gandamu. Nippon Sunrise. Directed and written by Yoshiyuki Tomino. Voice cast includes Toru Furuya, Shūichi Ikeda, You Inoue and Hirotaka Suzuoki. 43 25-minute episodes. Colour. / By 2179 (or year 0079 of the Universal Century) most of humanity lives in gigantic orbiting Space Habitats positioned at ...
Wimpfen, Sheldon
(1913-2003) US mining engineer and author whose sf novel, The Pringle Progression: Smaller/Fewer: a Novel (1998), describes a Near Future world devastated by Overpopulation as a young couple, a doctor and an engineer, attempt to discover a solution for the inability of Homo sapiens to stop breeding. The earlier Tin Peaks & Silver Streams (1995) is a memoir. [JC]
Kelleam, Joseph E
(1913-1975) US author and civil servant, an occasional contributor to the sf field since publishing his first story, "Rust" (October 1939 Astounding). His first novel, Overlords from Space (1956 dos), is a routine tale in which Alien conquerors of Earth are defeated at last. The Little Men (February 1959 Amazing as "Hunters out of Time"; 1960; vt Hunters out of Time 2012 ...
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 ...