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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.
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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 ...
Weekley, Richard
(1945- ) US teacher, poet and author of an sf Satire, The Adventures of Chet Blake – Plastic Man (1975), in which a Near Future rock group upsets the applecart, exposing some of the flaws of the new world. [JC]
Meteor
Film (1979). American International Pictures, Meteor Joint Venture, Palladium Productions. Produced by Arnold H Orgolini, Theodore R Parvin (credited as Theodore Parvin), and Run Run Shaw. Directed by Ronald Neame. Written by Edmund H North and Stanley Mann from a story by North. (Partial cast) Cast includes Sean Connery, Henry Fonda, Brian Keith, Martin Landeau, Karl Malden and Natalie Wood. 108 ...
Aiken, Joan
(1924-2004) UK author, daughter of Conrad Aiken, stepdaughter of Martin Armstrong [for both men see The Encyclopedia of Fantasy under links below], and sister of John Aiken; active from around 1940. She is best known as a highly prolific author of fantasy for children and Young Adult readers: her first novel, The Kingdom and the Cave (1960), features an ...
Gross, Philip
(1952- ) UK poet – whose first collection, Familiars (coll 1983 chap), was well received – and author, mostly for Young Adult audiences, beginning with The Song of Gail and Fludd (1991), a surreal rite of passage tale whose two protagonists, questing aimlessly from venue to venue as though traversing an endless Archipelago, encounter exemplary fantasy and sf modes of ...
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 ...