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Monday 20 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 ...
M-Brane SF
US downloadable and print-on-demand Online Magazine published and edited by Christopher Fletcher, initially in Oklahoma City, and from April 2010 in St Louis, and became part of M-Brane Press. It was published monthly, with occasional delays, from January 2009 to June 2011, with a final thirtieth issue in February 2012. The print version was letter size and the small print meant that although the early issues ran to about fifty pages, these probably ...
Collins, Helen
(1937- ) US biologist, teacher and author whose loose Genesis sequence contains two thematically linked volumes to date. The first, Mutagenesis (1993; rev MutaGenesis 2011), packs a wide range of material into its moderate compass. After recovering from a Long Night caused by Ecological devastation, an expedition from Earth rediscovers an old colony planet, where some original ...
Lester, Richard
Working name of US Television and Cinema writer, producer and director Richard Lester Liebman (1932- ), also credited as Dick Lester from 1955 to 1963; in the UK since 1955. He was influential in 1960s "Swinging England" with such Zeitgeist-attuned pop-culture productions as The Beatles' A Hard Day's Night (1964). His first sf film was the comedy The Mouse on the Moon (1963), based on ...
Alexander, David M
(1945- ) US lawyer and author who writes mysteries as David Grace, and whose first sf novel, The Chocolate Spy (1978), concerns the creation of an organic Computer using cloned braincells (see Clones). His second, Fane (1981), set on a planet whose electromagnetic configurations permit the controlled use of Magic, describes an inimical attempt to augment these ...
Langford, David
(1953- ) UK author, critic, editor, publisher and sf fan, in the latter capacity recipient of 21 Hugo awards for fan writing – some of the best of his several hundred pieces are assembled as Let's Hear It for the Deaf Man (coll 1992 chap US; much exp vt The Silence of the Langford 1996; exp 2015 ebook) as Dave Langford, edited by Ben Yalow – plus five Best Fanzine Hugos ...