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
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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 ...
Perry, Walter Copland
(1814-1911) UK author, lawyer and archaeologist in whose sf novel, The Revolt of the Horses (1898), the Houyhnhnms from Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels (1726; rev 1735) arrive in the Near Future England of 1950. Finding humans as terrible as ever – a Future War features in the tale – they decide to destroy the race. [JC]
Chambers, Becky
(1985- ) US-born author – now living in Reykjavik, Iceland – and Videogame columnist for The Mary Sue website, who has also written nonfiction for Tor.com and whose sf debut was the thoughtfully romantic Space Opera The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (2014). This, after becoming the first self-published novel to be shortlisted for a ...
Montgomery, R A
(1936-2014) US editor and author who also wrote as by Robert Mountain, first known for his contributions to the Choose Your Own Adventure sequence of non-computer-based Hypertext tales for the Young Adult market [see Checklist]; as an editor at Vermont Crossroads Press he published the first volume by Edward Packard under the series title ...
Pathfinders Series
These are four UK tv series that aired in 1960 and 1961, featuring recurring characters who engage in pioneering flights to the Moon, Mars and Venus. / 1. Target: Luna (1960). ABC Weekend Television. (Production credits assumed to be the same as those of the other three series.) Produced by Sydney Newman. Directed by Guy Verney. Written by Malcolm Hulke and ...
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 ...