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.
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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 ...
Howey, Hugh
(1975- ) US author who has become very well known for his successful use of a self-publishing model to create a market for his fiction, though his first work – the Bern Saga sequence beginning with Molly Fyde and the Parsona Rescue (2009) – was released traditionally, fittingly as regards its deliberately traditional Young Adult content. A young female space cadet finds herself travelling the interstellar ...
Puzo, Mario
(1920-1999) US author, best known for The Godfather (1969); he is of sf interest for The Fourth K (1990), a Near Future political thriller in which President Francis Xavier Kennedy takes the opportunity of the partial destruction of Manhattan (see New York) by Islamic terrorists to introduce authoritarian measures, ostensibly in order to save America. Puzo also co-wrote the screenplays for ...
Garnett, David S
(1947- ) UK author, author of a large number of books, many of them novels, in various genres and under various names. To differentiate himself from the elder David Garnett he created a middle initial to add to his own name, and in the US signed his early books Dav Garnett, for the same reason; he has published novels also as David Lee and David Ferring. His sf has always been action-oriented and dominated by ...
Fading Suns
Role Playing Game (1996). Holistic Design (HD). Designed by Bill Bridges, Andrew Greenberg. / Fading Suns is set in a Gothic interstellar empire, morally and intellectually decadent, which has reverted to medieval habits of thought. For unknown reasons, the stars are slowly going out. The society depicted is feudal and strongly religious, consciously evocative of Dark Ages Europe (see ...
Nicholls, Peter
(1939-2018) Australian editor and author, primarily a critic and historian of sf through his creation and editing of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction [see below]; resident in the UK 1970-1988, in Australia from 1988; worked as an academic in English literature (1962-1968, 1971-1977), scripted television documentaries, was a Harkness Fellow in Film-making (1968-1970) in the USA, worked as a publisher's editor (1982-1983), often broadcast film and book reviews on BBC Radio from 1974 and ...