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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 ...
ab Hugh, Dafydd
(1960- ) US author, born David M Friedman, whose Welsh-sounding name has been legalized. He is perhaps best known for his novella, "The Coon Rolled Down and Ruptured his Larinks, a Squeezed Novel by Mr. Skunk" (August 1990 Asimov's). This is a striking Post-Holocaust tale whose linguistic invention recalls Russell Hoban's Riddley Walker (1980), but which is ...
Cummins, Harle Oren
US author (1877-1937) who began selling stories to Pulp magazines and newspapers while studying mining engineering at MIT. Of those stories collected in Welsh Rarebit Tales (coll 1902) at least four, including "The Space Annihilator" (September 1901 Argosy as "Martin Bradley's Space Annihilator") and "The Man Who Made a Man" (in Welsh Rarebit Tales; no previous publication traced despite Peter ...
1990
UK tv serial (1977-1978). BBC TV. Produced by Prudence Fitzgerald. Regular cast included Edward Woodward, Barbara Kellerman, Robert Lang, Tony Doyle and Lisa Harrow. Most episodes written by Wilfred Greatorex, who devised the series, or Edmund Ward. 16 55-minute episodes. Colour. / Reflecting the fears of the middle classes in the 1970s, this serial, set in a socialist UK of 1990, warns of what could happen if the welfare state continued in its ...
Darvill-Evans, Peter
(1954- ) UK author and editor, involved in the Games world from about 1976, initiating his writing career with three Fighting Fantasy Ties beginning with Fighting Fantasy Gamebook 25: Beneath Nightmare Castle (1987). He is best-known for his creating for Virgin Books and editing the New Adventures sub-sequence of the overall ...
Robinson, Roger
(1943- ) UK computer programmer, bibliographer and publisher, active in UK Fandom for many years. The Writings of Henry Kenneth Bulmer (1983 chap; rev 1984 chap) is an exhaustive Bibliography of one of the most prolific sf writers, Kenneth Bulmer, and Who's Hugh?: An SF Reader's Guide to Pseudonyms (1987) is similarly exhaustive in its ...