SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Sunday 19 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 ...
Damned, The
Film (1961; vt These Are the Damned). Hammer/Swallow. Directed by Joseph Losey. Written by Evan Jones, based on The Children of Light (1960) by Henry L Lawrence. Cast includes MacDonald Carey, Shirley Ann Field, Alexander Knox, Viveca Lindfors and Oliver Reed. 96 minutes, cut to 87 minutes (UK) and to 77 minutes (US). Black and white. / Made in the UK by expatriate US director Losey, this film so dismayed the distributors, ...
Turner, T J
(? - ) US author of an Alternate History tale, Lincoln's Bodyguard: In a Heroic Act of Bravery Saves Our Beloved President! John Wilkes Booth Killed in Act of Treason (2015), the period and Jonbar Point being made clear in the subtitle. The story goes on to trace the bodyguard's subsequent travails, as his act of heroism has served to prolong the Civil War, and his family ...
Isis
US juvenile tv series (1975-1976; vt The Secrets of Isis). Filmation Associates for CBS television. Directors were Hollingsworth Morse, Arnold Laven, Arthur H Badel and Earl Bellamy. Writers included Marc Richards and many others. Cast includes JoAnna Cameron, Brian Cutler and Joanne Pang. 22 30-minute episodes. Colour. / Isis was the first female Superhero to star in her own US Television series, beating both ...
Welch, Edgar L
(1856/1857-1926) US author who published fiction and nonfiction as by Grip (he is not the UK Grip, an unidentified pseudonym). In 1893 Welch founded a magazine, "Grip's" Valley Gazette, published in Albany, New York, many of whose individual issues were given over to a series of at least twenty "Historical Souvenirs" in which Grip minutely describes various communities in upper New York state. By 1905 or so he became inactive. He is given an entry to ...
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 ...