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Tuesday 14 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 ...
Patneaude, David
(1944- ) US author of Young Adult tales, whose Dark Starry Morning: Stories of This World and Beyond (coll 1996) contains both fantasy and sf; Epitaph Road (2010), set in the distant Near Future – sometime after a Pandemic in 2067 has eliminated almost all males (see Disaster) – interestingly explores ...
Talabi, Wole
(1986- ) Nigerian engineer, editor and author now resident in Malaysia. Talabi began publishing work of genre interest with "The Human Thing" in The Naked Convos in 2011. He made his first professional sale with "Wednesday's Story" in Lightspeed Magazine for May 2016, and has since published a string of works in genre publications including F&SF, Clarkesworld and others. "The Regression Test" ...
20,000 Leagues under the Sea
Film (1954). Walt Disney (see The Walt Disney Company). Directed by Richard Fleischer. Written by Earl Felton, based on Vingt mille lieues sous les mers (1870; trans as Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Seas 1872) by Jules Verne. Cast includes Kirk Douglas, Peter Lorre, Paul Lukas and James Mason. 127 minutes. Colour. / This early Walt Disney live-action film set ...
Goulart, Ron
(1933-2022) US author, born in California, where he lived until the late 1960s and which he made the effective template (whatever the venue or planet might be called) for much of his sf, including the large loose Barnum System sequence. After graduation he worked in an advertising agency, later putting on record the influence of this experience on the forming of his concise, polished style. He began to publish work of genre interest with "Letters to the ...
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 ...