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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 ...
Denning, Troy
(1958- ) US author best known for numerous fantasy Ties, mostly in the Dark Sun and Forgotten Realms domains, at least once using the pseudonym or House Name Richard Awlinson for a title in the latter franchise; these are not listed below. Of sf interest are Ties like the Gamebook ...
Blue Sunshine
Film (1977). Ellanby/Blue Sunshine Co. Written and directed Jeff Lieberman. Cast includes Mark Goddard, Zalman King, Robert Walden and Deborah Winters. 95 minutes. Colour. / Lieberman's first film was a witty (if disgusting) Monster Movie, Squirm (1976) – the last word on killer worms; its novelization was Squirm (1976) by Richard A Curtis. Blue Sunshine, Lieberman's ...
Blackburn, John
(1923-1993) UK antiquarian book dealer and author, in many of whose novels a powerful ambience of Horror derives from a calculated use of material from several genres, including sf, often simultaneously; he was a sophisticated, commercial exploiter of Equipoise in fantastic fiction. The loose General Kirk sequence beginning with A Scent of New-Mown Hay (1958; vt The Reluctant Spy 1966), ...
Hayles, N Katherine
(1943- ) US academic and Postmodern literary critic, professor and director of graduate studies in literature at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. As a critic, Hayles is concerned to explore the links between science, literature and Technology. Her Chaos Bound: Orderly Disorder in Contemporary Literature and Science (1990) contains much of genre interest. It was followed by ...
Langford, David
(1953- ) UK author, critic, editor, publisher and sf fan, in the latter capacity recipient of 21 Hugo awards for fan writing – some of the best of his several hundred pieces are assembled as Let's Hear It for the Deaf Man (coll 1992 chap US; much exp vt The Silence of the Langford 1996; exp 2015 ebook) as Dave Langford, edited by Ben Yalow – plus five Best Fanzine Hugos ...