SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Monday 20 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 20 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 ...
Phillips, Alexander M
(1907-1991) US author and long-time sf fan, based in Philadelphia, who wrote a small body of science fiction, fantasy and nonfiction. He was a technical writer and draughtsman as well as an amateur naturalist and photographer. His first professionally published story was "The Death of the Moon" (February 1929 Amazing), in which advanced Aliens from the Moon attempt to conquer Earth in the ...
Doolittle, Sean
(1971- ) US author almost exclusively of crime thrillers; of some sf interest is Kill Monster (2019), in which a 150-year old Golem, excavated in Steampunk fashion from a landlocked ship in Kansas, continues its mission to execute a now-long-dead criminal, fastening its attention on the criminal's descendant. The action is compactly spoofish. [JC]
de Bodard, Aliette
(1982- ) US-born software engineer and author, her background being French and Vietnamese, in France from the age of one; her first language is French but she has always written in English. She began to publish work of genre interest with "A Warrior's Death" in Shimmer for Spring 2006, and has rapidly come into prominence for her short fiction: "The Shipmaker" (November 2010 Interzone) which won a ...
Cast, P C
(1960- ) US author, almost exclusively of Young Adult fantasy, much of it with her daughter Kristin Cast in the House of Night sequence beginning with Marked (2007), set in an Alternate History version of America inhabited by both homo sapiens and "vampyres" (see Vampires); she also collaborated on a sequel series, ...
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 ...