SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Saturday 18 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 ...
Chan Koonchung
(1952- ) Chinese author, editor, journalist, screenwriter and producer, sometimes billed as John Koon or John Chan, a key figure in the modern history of many media in Chinese, but known in the sf genre for a single work. Born in Shanghai but raised in Hong Kong, he completed his education in Boston before returning to Hong Kong in 1976 as the founding editor of Hao Wai ["City Magazine"]. He wrote and produced several films since the ...
Toudouze, Georges-Gustave
Working name of French journalist, playwright and author Henry Georges Edouard Toudouze (1877-1972), many of his novels being for children. Some of these contain at least some fantastic interest, including Le Petit Roi d'Ys ["The Little King of Ys"] (25 January-28 June 1913; 1914; trans Michael West as King of the Undersea City 1938 chap), whose archaeologist protagonist discovers an ancient kingdom Under the Sea (see ...
Hitchcock, Raymond
(1922-1992) Indian-born UK author and cartoonist whose Percy books – Percy (1969) – filmed as Percy (1971) – and Percy's Progress (1972) – filmed as Percy's Progress (1974) – explored the comedy potential of penis transplantation as the organ's new owner is "led" to hunt down his new penis's previous insertion events. Venus 13: A Cautionary Space Tale (1972) also deals lightly with ...
Beast, The
Videogame (2001; vt A.I. Web Game). Microsoft. Designed by Jordan Weisman, Elan Lee, Sean Stewart. Platforms: Web. / The Beast was the first Alternate Reality Game. The key premises underlying its design were that it should be a cooperative game (solved by many people working together on the internet), that its existence should be kept secret from the players (so ...
Robinson, Roger
(1943- ) UK computer programmer, bibliographer and publisher, active in UK Fandom for many years. The Writings of Henry Kenneth Bulmer (1983 chap; rev 1984 chap) is an exhaustive Bibliography of one of the most prolific sf writers, Kenneth Bulmer, and Who's Hugh?: An SF Reader's Guide to Pseudonyms (1987) is similarly exhaustive in its ...