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Thursday 16 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 ...
Stockton, Kindred
Pseudonym of US engineer and author Geoffrey S Bok (? - ), whose first novel Deep Shade (2020), set in a Near Future Florida devastated by Climate Change, Ecological degradation, Overpopulation and Pollution, describes the inexorable growth of invasive flora and fauna in the ...
Wade, Colonel G A
(1891-1986) UK soldier, manufacturer, painter, politician and author who was in active service throughout World War One, winning the Military Cross. His The Defence of Bloodford Village (1940 chap) is a training aid produced for the British Home Guard against a very Near Future German Invasion, with German parachutists descending on the eponymous village, which they occupy, creating a ...
Lunatic, Sir Humphry
Pseudonym used by Irish actor, critic, playwright and author Francis Gentleman (1728-1784), whose working years were spent mostly in England, for a Proto SF imitation – and perhaps conscious Parody of – the Fantastic Voyage as found in the work of Cyrano de Bergerac and others; the tale, ...
Dawson, Les
(1931-1993) UK stand-up and television comedian, whose self-mocking, pantomime-based, "working-class" humour made a strong impact on a very wide audience; of his several novels, A Time Before Genesis: A Novel of the Future's Past (1986), a seriously overwritten Near Future tale dousing its sf elements in Horror tropes as the protagonists discover the true masters of the universe. [JC]
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 ...