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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.
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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 ...
Silver Streak Comics
US Comic (1939-1942; 1946). Your Guide Publications Inc, New Friday Publications Inc, Comic House Inc. 23 issues. Artists include Jack Binder, Dick Briefer, Don Rico and Bob Wood. Script writers include Otto Binder (see Eando Binder), Dick Briefer, Leslie Charteris, Carl Formes, Don Rico and Dick Wood. 68 pages per issue (fewer in #22 and #23), usually with 7-9 long ...
Sleep No More
Radio anthology series (1956-1957). NBC Radio Network. Producers included Kenneth MacGregor. Announcer: Ben Grauer. Cast includes Nelson Olmstead (1914-1992). 24 15-minute and later 30-minute episodes. / Authors who had stories adapted included Ambrose Bierce, Algernon Blackwood, Jack London, Edgar Allan Poe and ...
Dunn, J Allan
(1872-1941) UK-born traveller, editor and author, in USA from 1893, most prolific as an author of Westerns, more than half of his output of at least 1000 stories being in that category; before about 1913, he normally wrote as Allan Dunn. He also wrote as by Joseph Montague. Of sf interest are The Flower of Fate (1928), in which a Lost Race of Lemurians is discovered on an Island in the South ...
Politics
Most of the works which we can characterize with hindsight as Proto SF are political fantasies. The earnest and constructive aspect of this endeavour is generally displayed in Utopias, the mocking and corrosive aspect in Satires. The desire to make political statements has continued to be the main motive force in works of sf by Mainstream Writers, although modern ...
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 ...