SF Encyclopedia Home Page
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
Sponsor of the day: The League of Fan Funds
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 ...
Yamano Kōichi
(1939-2017) Japanese author, editor and scenarist who became the country's leading proponent of the New Wave in sf, counter to prevailing trends in the field that continued to favour a model of fiction aping that of the Golden Age of SF in the United States. After a peripatetic youth and a flirtation with screenwriting, Yamano's professional sf debut was "X Densha de Ikō" ["Take the X Train"] (July ...
Marryat, Florence
(1833-1899) UK author, playwright, editor (of London Society magazine 1872-1876) and actress, daughter of the naval officer and pioneering sea-story author Captain Frederick Marryat (1792-1848); now perhaps best remembered for her espousal of Spiritualism as recorded in such late nonfiction works as There Is No Death (1891) and The Spirit World (1894) [not listed below]. She was a prolific author of sensational novels from 1865 onwards, also publishing both ...
Hartwell, David G
(1941-2016) US editor, publisher and critic, married to Kathryn Cramer from 1997; his first publication of genre interest was SF-I: A Selective Bibliography (1971 chap) with L W Currey, writing together as Kilgore Trout; he also assisted Currey in the latter's seminal ...
Reptilicus
Film (1962). Cinemagic, American International Pictures. Directed by Sidney Pink. Written by Ib Melchior, Pink. Cast includes Carl Ottosen and Ann Smyrner. 90 minutes. Colour. / In this, the Danish cinema's only excursion into the monster genre, the tail of a buried Dinosaur is exhumed and taken to a laboratory where it regenerates an entire new body (see ...
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 ...