SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Wednesday 15 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
Sponsor of the day: Andy Richards of Cold Tonnage Books
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 ...
Metamorphosis Alpha
Role Playing Game (1976). Tactical Studies Rules (TSR). Designed by James Ward (1951-2024). / Metamorphosis Alpha was the first science fiction RPG. It is set on a Generation Starship (the "Warden") which has suffered an unspecified disaster many years in the game's past, a concept inspired by Brian Aldiss's novel ...
Terrin, Peter
(1968- ) Belgian author whose second novel, Blanco ["Blank"] (2003), depicts a disintegrative relationship between a father and son after the former has lost his wife, couched in terms that have evoked comparison to Franz Kafka. Of sf interest is his fourth novel, De Bewaker (2009; trans David Colmer as The Guard 2012), set in an Underground parking lot occupied by ...
Krohn, Leena
(1947- ) Finnish author whose first novels were composed for younger readers, an example being Ihmisen vaatteissa: Kertomus kaupungilta (1976; trans Bethany Fox as "The Pelican's New Clothes: A Story from the City" in Collected Fiction 2015), whose young protagonist experiences a magical City through his relationship with the eponymous talking bird. Krohn's focus on multivariant experiences of urban life [for Beast ...
Hurd, Douglas
(1930- ) UK Conservative politician and author, in the former capacity serving his government between 1984 and 1995 at Cabinet level. His sf novels are, perhaps understandably, Near-Future thrillers in which the UK must survive threats from within and without (see Politics). Send Him Victorious (1968) with Andrew Osmond (1938-1999) is the first of the Harvey sequence tracing the ...
Nicholls, Peter
(1939-2018) Australian editor and author, primarily a critic and historian of sf through his creation and editing of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction [see below]; resident in the UK 1970-1988, in Australia from 1988; worked as an academic in English literature (1962-1968, 1971-1977), scripted television documentaries, was a Harkness Fellow in Film-making (1968-1970) in the USA, worked as a publisher's editor (1982-1983), often broadcast film and book reviews on BBC Radio from 1974 and ...