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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.
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 ...
Bubble, The
Film (1966; vt Fantastic Invasion of Planet Earth 1976). Arch Oboler Productions/Midwestern MagicVuers. Produced by Marvin J Chomsky. Directed by Arch Oboler. Written by Oboler. Cast includes Michael Cole, Johnny Desmond and Deborah Walley. 112 minutes; cut to 94 minutes for 1976 re-release; later versions cut to 75 minutes. Colour. / Young married couple Mark (Cole) and Katherine (Walley), the latter heavily pregnant, take a trip in a private ...
Sapper
Pseudonym of UK author Herman Cyril McNeile (1888-1937), who wrote many thrillers and stories of World War One, in which he served. Initially writing as H C McNeile (the byline used for US editions of all his short stories), "Sapper" became famous for the creation in Bull-Dog Drummond: The Adventures of a Demobilized Officer Who Found Peace Dull (1920) of Bull-Dog Drummond, a thuggish antisemitic crime-fighting gentleman vigilante, some of ...
Bennett, Arthur
(1862-1931) UK author, father of Alfred Gordon Bennett. His A Dream of an Englishman (1893) describes in inadequately fictionalized terms the history of the world in the twentieth century; Space Flight is mooted. The Dream of a Warringtonian (1900), self-published in Warrington, UK, describes a similar period as it applies to Warrington. [JC]
Matthews, Clyde
(1917-? ) US author of The Ides of March Conspiracy: The Year the IRS Got What it Deserves (1979), a Near Future Satire in which a Computer expert fights back against the American Internal Revenue Service and its snooping. [JC]
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 ...