SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Tuesday 21 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 20 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 ...
Lobster, The
Film (2015). A24 Release, Film4, Bord Scannán na hÉireann / Irish Film Board, Eurimages, the Netherlands Film Fund, Greek Film Centre and BFI present in association with Protagonist Pictures an Element Pictures, Scarlet Films, Faliro House, Haut et Court, Lemming Film co-production in association with Limp with the participation of CANAL+, CINE+ and Aide aux cinémas du monde, Centre national du cinéma et de l'image ...
Adair, Hazel
Pseudonym of India-born actor, television producer, scriptwriter and author Hazel Joyce Marriott (1920-2015), in the UK from infancy, perhaps best known for her co-creation with Peter Ling of the British daily television serial Crossroads (1964-1988); she also wrote as by Clare Nicol and Klaus Vogel. Of sf interest is Stranger from Space (1953) with Ronald Marriott (her husband), about a young Alien from Mars who is ...
Kingston, Agnes Kinloch
(1824-1913) UK linguist and translator, married from 1853 until his death to W H G Kingston, who published her translations of Jules Verne and Johann Wyss under his own name without acknowledgement; for some later work she signed herself Agnes D Kingston. These translations, which have been properly faulted for expurgations and inaccuracies, were typical of Victorian workmanship in this ...
Bhattacharya, Lokenath
(1927-2001) Indian-born Bengali translator and author whose fourth novel, Bābughātera Kumāri Mācha (1972; trans Meenakshi Mukherjee as The Virgin Fish of Babughat 1975), focuses its moderately abstract depiction of a Near-Future Dystopian country on the fate of the inmates of a surreal Zoo-like ...
Nicholls, Peter
(1939-2018) Australian editor and author, primarily a critic and historian of sf through his creation and editing of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction [see below]; resident in the UK 1970-1988, in Australia from 1988; worked as an academic in English literature (1962-1968, 1971-1977), scripted television documentaries, was a Harkness Fellow in Film-making (1968-1970) in the USA, worked as a publisher's editor (1982-1983), often broadcast film and book reviews on BBC Radio from 1974 and ...