SF Encyclopedia Home Page
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 ...
Dorman, Sonya
(1924-2005) US author who sometimes signed herself as Sonya Dorman Hess or Sonya Hess, and who began publishing sf with The Putnam Tradition (January 1963 Amazing; 2008 ebook) establishing a reputation in the field for intensely written, sometimes highly metaphorical stories, the best known of which is "When I Was Miss Dow" (June 1966 Galaxy), which was given a retrospective ...
Bennett, Arnold
(1867-1931) UK journalist and author whose more ambitious work – in particular the Five Towns novels, the best known of these being The Old Wives' Tale (1908) – made no use of the fantastic. In the 1890s some fantastical tales, and several book reviews, were published as by Sarah Volatile; the fiction was assembled with other work, as Arnold Bennett's Uncollected Short Stories 1892-1932 (coll 2010) edited by John Shapcott. Bennett was a friend and ...
Forerunners
Term used in this encyclopedia for the frequent Space Opera plot device of a bygone Alien race which once dominated the galaxy but – following what may or may not be a significant Time Abyss – has mysteriously vanished, generally leaving behind numerous relics of its "Old Technology" which may serve as tempting McGuffins. Such artefacts often include enigmatic ...
Robu, Cornel
(1938-2016) Romanian lecturer in literature (at Cluj-Napoca University) and sf critic, some of whose many articles have appeared in English, including "A Key to Science Fiction: The Sublime" (Spring 1988 Foundation #42) and "Milestones in Postwar Romanian Science Fiction" (Summer 1990 Foundation). Panorama romanului românesc contemporan: 1944-1974 ["Panorama ...
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 ...