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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.
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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 ...
Shock Tales
US letter-size saddle-stapled weird fiction magazine. Publisher: M F Enterprises as "M.F. Ent." Editor: Myron Fass. One issue only, January 1959. / This magazine was primarily made up of low-quality Horror fiction some of which bordered on science fiction. While there was almost no film material, it is nevertheless a sought-after item by collectors of ...
Corley, James
(1947- ) UK author and computer programmer whose first novel, Benedict's Planet (1976), combines Space Opera and some rather technical speculations about the possibility of Faster-than-Light travel in a somewhat overcrowded tale in which the discoverer of a new source of fuel runs into complex trouble. Neither Orsini Godbase (1978) nor Sundrinker (1980), ...
Batman: The Dark Knight Returns
Influential Graphic Novel by writer-artist Frank Miller, starring an aged, cynical and disillusioned Batman, who begrudgingly returns from a ten-year retirement amidst a Near-Future Dystopia that has overrun his beloved Gotham City with gang violence. Published in four volumes in 1986 by DC Comics and ...
Jennings, Humphrey
(1907-1950) UK documentary film maker and editor, a co-founder of Mass Observation in 1936; his thirty films have gained increasing renown since his early death from a fall in Greece while scouting locations for a new film. Of sf interest is his Hitler Wins Alternate History short film, The Silent Village (1943), which is shot in documentary style. Much of his energy in ...
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 ...