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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 ...
McLaughlin, Iain
(1967- ) UK Comics writer, author of several Radio plays including some for the Doctor Who universe, some with Claire Bartlett; he began to publish work of genre interest with "The Time Lord's Story" (with Bartlett) in Doctor Who: Short Trips: Repercussions (anth 2004) edited by Gary Russell. He is the ...
Le Guin, Ursula K
(1929-2018) US author and poet, based in Portland, Oregon, whose first novel was published in 1966; by 1970 she was already recognized as one of the most important writers within the field. Decades before her death, her reputation had extended far beyond the readership of Genre SF, while within the genre she was honoured with five Hugos and six Nebulas; as much attention has been paid to her by the academic ...
Fan Funds
Travel funds are a long-established tradition of Fandom, combining elements of Awards, charity (visiting the USA was once financially impossible for a typical UK fan), and cultural exchange programmes. Forrest J Ackerman proposed the Big Pond Fund with the aim of bringing John Carnell from Britain to the 1947 US Worldcon. Owing to ...
Boothby, Guy
(1867-1905) Australian-born playwright and author, schooled in the UK 1874-1883, again resident in the UK from 1894, author of a large number of books in various genres; he remains best known for his Dr Nikola sequence: A Bid for Fortune; Or, Dr Nikola's Vendetta (1895) [for magazine appearance and subtitles see Checklist below], where Nikola's capacity to mesmerize his victims (see Hypnosis) is made explicit; Doctor Nikola ...
Clute, John
(1940- ) Canadian critic, editor and author, in the UK from 1969; married to Judith Clute from 1964, partner of Elizabeth Hand since 1996. He began to publish work of genre interest with an sf-tinged poem "Carcajou Lament" in Triquarterly for Winter 1960 [ie Autumn 1959]; he began consistently publishing sf reviews in his "New Fiction" column for the Toronto Star (1966-1967), and later in ...