SF Encyclopedia Home Page
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 20 April 2026
Sponsor of the day: Paul Giamatti
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 ...
Fantastic Four
Film (2005). Twentieth Century Fox/Constantin Film/Marvel Enterprises. Directed by Tim Story. Written by Mark Frost, Michael France, based on the Marvel Comic by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. Cast includes Jessica Alba, Michael Chiklis, Chris Evans, Ioan Gruffudd and Julian McMahon. 105 minutes. Colour. / While aboard a ...
Bainbridge, William Sims
(1940- ) US sociologist whose interest in the mapping of sf as a subculture and as a presentation of worldviews has distinguished his career, an early example, published within the frame of Genre SF, being "New Maps of Science Fiction" in Analog Yearbook (anth 1978) edited by Ben Bova; as commonly found in some academic disciplines, the essay was written in collaboration, in this case with Murray M ...
Hansen, Rob
(1954- ) UK fan, active in Fandom since the mid-1970s, who has edited and co-edited numerous Fanzines including his debut production Epsilon (18 issues 1976-1985) and Pulp (19 issues 1986-1991); his artwork has appeared in many fanzines including his own. He was the 1984 TransAtlantic Fan Fund delegate (see Fan Funds). From 1987 he has released the ...
Bailey, Thomas
Pseudonym of US author Edward Bellamy Partridge (1877-1960), who wrote Country Lawyer (1939) under his full name, also publishing work as Bellamy Partridge and Bailey. In his Lost Race novel, Long Night (1935), a young woman, lost in the Arctic, is taken by the Inuit chief who rescues her to a mysterious Island where she finds a Viking still alive. The Viking and the Inuit fight over her. [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 ...