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
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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 ...
Tomerlin, John
(1930-2014) US screenwriter and author who began to publish work of genre interest with "Alienation of Affection" in Science Fantasy for February 1957. Run from the Hunter (1957) with Charles Beaumont writing together as Keith Grantland is a nonfantastic thriller about a man on the run after being falsely convicted; it inspired the television series The Fugitive (1963-1967) and its ...
Anderson, Dwayne
(1982- ) Canadian author whose first sf novel, Alien Conflict (2002) features an Alien attempt to prevent World War Four on Earth; his second is Hellfire Apocalypse (2004). [JC]
Homeostatic Systems
An item of sf Terminology borrowed from the pre-digital-Computer era of Cybernetics. A homeostatic system is a device which automatically maintains itself in a state of equilibrium, with input and output exactly balanced, using negative feedback devices to do so. The term originally came from physiology, for the human body itself has many homeostatic systems – perhaps more simply thought of, to ...
Caraker, Mary
(1929- ) US author of whom relatively little is known; she is of Finnish descent and began to publish sf when she was nearing 50, with "The Vampires who Loved Beowulf" in Analog for January 1983, a story which makes up part of her first novel, Seven Worlds (fixup 1986), whose protagonist, a tough female Space Exploratory Forces agent named Morgan Faraday, is entrusted with the task of improving ...
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 ...