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Tuesday 14 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, Sarah
(1979- ) UK author whose novels fit comfortably within the armature of Fantastika, while making some room for more straightforward sf readings (see Gothic SF). The protagonist of her first novel, After Me Comes the Flood (2014), who has become bewildered by a heat wave, exits London to find his brother in Norfolk, but goes astray into a mysterious woodland [for Into the ...
Sierra i Fabra, Jordi
(1947- ) Prolific science fiction, fantasy, horror and mainstream writer, mainly of Young Adult literature and books for children in Spanish and Catalan. He has published more than fifty fantastic-themed books in Spain and Latin America, out of more than five hundred published books. His works have been translated into more than twelve languages and some of them adapted for ...
Swann, Ingo
(1933-2013) US psychic experimenter, artist and author whose psychic abilities were once compared favourably with those of Uri Geller (1946- ); in his one novel, Star Fire (1978), a Near Future rock star (see Music), endowed with a unique mind capable of psychic feats (see Evolution; Psi Powers), saves Homo sapiens from enemies ...
Lynch, Patrick
Joint pseudonym of UK authors Gary Humphreys (? - ) and Philip Sington (1962- ) for a series of Technothrillers including The Annunciation (1993) and Carriers (1995), a medical Technothriller about a hugely menacing Pandemic originating in the tropics. [JC]
Langford, David
(1953- ) UK author, critic, editor, publisher and sf fan, in the latter capacity recipient of 21 Hugo awards for fan writing – some of the best of his several hundred pieces are assembled as Let's Hear It for the Deaf Man (coll 1992 chap US; much exp vt The Silence of the Langford 1996; exp 2015 ebook) as Dave Langford, edited by Ben Yalow – plus five Best Fanzine Hugos ...