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Saturday 18 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 ...
Edge, The
UK A4-size review-and-comment Semiprozine, somewhat left field, with a discerning interest in indie culture and art, but which also carried alternative and experimental fiction influenced by the Michael Moorcock-era New Worlds and by the British music and culture magazine The Face. It was published and edited by journalist David Clark (until 2001 under his alias Graham Evans) since ...
Shear, David
(1938-2007) US biophysicist and author whose Near Future sf novel, Cloning (1972), complicatedly entwines the presence of Androids and Cloning in the world of 2020; the protagonist, a molecular biologist who is an unknowing member of a cluster of clones, must cope with profound issues of Identity, dramatized through an Android campaign ...
Davidson, Lionel
(1922-2009) UK author who began to publish short fiction – none of it apparently fantastic – in the 1930s, and who was best known for his intermittent but highly successful thrillers, beginning with The Night of Wenceslas (1960). In his second novel, The Rose of Tibet (1962), a young man traces his half-brother into a Lost World in the heart of 1950 Tibet, just as China prepares to invade; it is a tale full of the same ...
Rodgers, Alan
(1959-2014) US author who began publishing work of genre interest with "The Boy who Came Back from the Dead" in Masques #2 (anth 1987) edited by J N Williamson (1932-2005), a strongly moving fantasy tale later assembled with other work in New Life for the Dead (coll 1991). Rodgers's first novel, Blood of the Children (1989), is horror, but his second, Fire (1990), combines sf and horror in a Near-Future ...
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 ...