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Wednesday 22 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 ...
Jacomb, C E
(1888-1961) UK editor and author who was in active service during World War One; he is the author of one Scientific Romance, And A New Earth: A Romance (1926), which combines the Utopian and Future War genres: a millionaire has established on Easter Island (see Island) an elitist ...
Kuhn, Lan
Pseudonym of Australian author Lana Sansom (1939- ), who has also written as Lana Kuhn-Sansom; her sf novel, The Outer Space Connection (1978), is an abstractly told First Contact tale. [JC]
Bunch, Chris
(1943-2005) US screenwriter and author, in the latter capacity almost exclusively of series; his first two series – the Sten sequence of Military SF adventures beginning with Sten (1982) and ending with Empire's End (1993), and the Anteros fantasy sequence – were both written with Allan Cole. The first of these at least is thought mainly to express Cole's way with things, ...
Jensen, Liz
(1959- ) UK journalist, sculptor and author whose first novel, Egg Dancing (1995), is a Satire set in a Near Future Britain agitated by the destabilizing threat that Genetic Engineering can lead to the "Perfect Baby"; Ark Baby (1997), its thematic sibling, is also set in the Near Future and also deals with ...
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 ...