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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 ...
Shiel, M P
(1865-1947) Montserrat-born author with his surname given as Shiell, in the UK from around 1883. He began writing fiction in the late 1880s and continued intermittently until his death, his first work of genre interest being "Huguenin's Wife" for Pall Mall Magazine in April 1895; most of his short fiction of fantastic interest was published 1896-1901. Shiel was intensely concerned with style per se, incorporating poetic techniques into narrative ...
Drexciya
US dance-music band founded by James Stinson (1969-2002). Drexciya's music is precise, intricate and often beautifully spare, unusually in a sub-genre generally characterized by over-frantic emphasis and rapid tempos. The band's releases were all supported by a distinctive "Black Atlantic" science-fictional narrative – critic Kodwo Eshun [see links below] calls it "electronic music's most ambitious sonic fiction since Parliament's 1975-79 Mothership ...
Kyme, Nick
(? - ) UK editor and author, involved in Games journalism and other functions from 1998; his sf novels are Ties to Games Workshop Wargame universes, beginning with Necromunda: Back from the Dead (2006) and continuing with a Warhammer novel, Warhammer: Oathbreaker (2008), and several for the more heavily sf-oriented ...
Third Alternative, The
UK Semiprozine published by TTA Press, Ely and edited by Andy Cox; 42 issues, #1 [January] 1994 to Summer 2005. After a two-year hiatus it was reborn as the dark fantasy and horror magazine Black Static. The first ten issues were in A5 size, but from issue #11 (Winter 1996/1997) switched to A4 format; Black Static retained this format from #1 (September 2007) to #28 (April/May 2012) and from #29 (July/August 2012) changed – with what was now ...
Robinson, Roger
(1943- ) UK computer programmer, bibliographer and publisher, active in UK Fandom for many years. The Writings of Henry Kenneth Bulmer (1983 chap; rev 1984 chap) is an exhaustive Bibliography of one of the most prolific sf writers, Kenneth Bulmer, and Who's Hugh?: An SF Reader's Guide to Pseudonyms (1987) is similarly exhaustive in its ...