SF Encyclopedia Home Page
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
Sponsor of the day: Andy Richards of Cold Tonnage Books
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 ...
Tanner, Ron
(1953- ) US teacher, musician and author whose short fiction is usually nonfantastic though fruitfully exorbitant; his sf novel, Kiss Me, Stranger: An Illustrated Novel (2011), is a Satire set in a balkanized Dystopian America at a point seemingly close to the End of the World; attempting to keep her family together, the female protagonist runs through a gamut of ...
Justy
Japanese OVA (1985; vt Cosmo Police Justy). Studio Pierrot. Based on the Manga by Tsuguo Okazaki. Directed by Motosuke Takahashi. Written by Hiroyuki Hoshiyama. Voice cast includes Kazuhiko Inoue, Miina Tominaga and Keiko Yokozawa. 44 minutes. Colour. / Young Justy Kaizard (Inoue) is an Esper working for the Galaxy Control System's Cosmo Police (see ...
Slow Glass
A glass-like substance based on Imaginary Science, which in effect has a refractive index so huge that light takes significant time – from seconds to many years – to pass through a sheet or block of the material. It thus functions as a limited Time Viewer. Bob Shaw coined the term in his fine story "Light of Other Days" (August 1966 Analog), where slow-glass ...
Miller, Joaquin
Pseudonym of US poet and author Cincinnatus Hiner Miller (1837-1913). Various birth dates have been suggested, but Miller was notoriously unreliable; we give here a current consensus. His adopted name (he said) was taken from Joaquin Murieta (?1829-1853), a famously legendary California desperado (who may have never in fact existed). Miller's poetry, which was nonfantastic, wears surprisingly well; he was active as a journalist from about 1862, making use – as did Ambrose ...
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 ...