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Tuesday 14 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 ...
Hill, Matt
(1984- ) UK author who also writes as M T Hill; his first novel, The Folded Man (2013), depicts a Dystopian Near Future Manchester, desiccated through political betrayals by the London-based national government, and run by corrupt exploiters of the Midlands population; the protagonist, through his belief that he is in fact a mermaid, lightens the texture of the tale. His second novel, also set in ...
Ye Yonglie
(1940-2020) Chinese author and occasional film director, sometimes under the pen-names Ye Yang, Ye Ting, Xiao Yong or Jiu Yuan, whose output stretches to fifty volumes of material, of which twenty-four are listed as "works popularizing science". A graduate in chemistry from Beijing University, Ye published his first poem aged eleven, and his first book while still a student. Aged twenty, he became one of the lead authors in the best-selling periodical ...
Wilson, Steve
(1943- ) US author who published non-sf short fiction and three biker thrillers before the appearance of The Lost Traveller: A Motorcycle Grail Quest and Science Fiction Western (1976) – not to be confused with Ruthven Todd's The Lost Traveller (1943). Wilson's version, set in a desolate Post-Holocaust venue at century's end, extols the survival capacity of a ...
Rammellzee
(1960-2010) US multi-disciplinary artist whose work covered performance art, rap, graffiti, painting, sculptor and comics. He drew on history, science, sf and popular culture to shape a mythology to inspire his artwork. An African-American/Italian who kept his real name secret, Rammellzee was part of New York's burgeoning rap and graffiti culture as it evolved in the late seventies, becoming a member of the city's underground art scene – which included the likes of Jean-Michel Basquiat, ...
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 ...