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Friday 17 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 ...
Burdekin, Katharine
(1896-1963) UK author, who was working in a military hospital during World War One when her husband was wounded in action; she signed some of her work Kay Burdekin in America and, in the 1930s, wrote what remains her best-known novel as by Murray Constantine, a pseudonym which was confirmed only in 1985 by Professor Daphne Patai. Neither of her first two novels explores the fantastic. Her third, The Burning Ring (1927), however, is a ...
McKeone, Lee
(1937-2007) US author of the Ghoster sequence of Space Operas – Ghoster (1988), Backblast (1989) and Starfire Down (1991) – set in undemanding interstellar venues where human entrepreneurs may comically flourish. McKeone subsequently concentrated on Ties, including the Birthright sequence tied to the Role Playing Game and signed ...
Varela, Nina
(? - ) US author whose Own Voices/Crier's War sequence beginning with Crier's War (2019) is set in a distant Near Future world where "Automata" – AI-powered Androids – have long since exercised despotic control over humans, who are generally restricted to large Keeps, effectively as slaves (see ...
Lemaître, Jules
(1853-1914) French dramatist, critic and author whose Les Rois (1893; trans Belle M Sherman as Prince Hermann Regent 1893; new trans Ernest Tristan and G F Monkshood Their Majesties the Kings 1909) is a Near Future tale set in 1900 in the Ruritanian kingdom of Alfaine, the story detailing an increasingly melancholy sequence of abdications that climaxes in a revolution. [JC]
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 ...