SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Tuesday 21 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 20 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 ...
Akudama Drive
Japanese animated tv series (2020). Created by Pierrot and Too Kyo Games. Pierrot (studio). Directed by Tomohisa Taguchi. Written by Norimitsu Kaihō and Tomohisa Taguchi. Voice cast includes Shun Horie, Kana Ichinose, Tomoyo Kurosawa, Megumi Ogata, Takahiro Sakurai, Shunsuke Takeuchi, Maaya Uchida and Yūichirō Umehara. Twelve 24-minute episodes. Colour. / In the Near Future Japanese ...
Stern, Roger
(1950- ) US Comics writer and editor, and author of three Ties to graphic works in which he had been involved: The Death and Life of Superman (1993) and Smallville: Strange Visitors (2002), both in the Smallville subsection of the Superman Universe division of the DC Comics Metaverse overseries; and Superman: The Never-Ending Battle ...
Bellamy, Edward
(1850-1898) US author and journalist, the latter from 1871, when he abandoned the practice of law before having properly begun it; no lawyers exist in the 2000 CE of his most famous work, the Utopia Looking Backward 2000-1887 (1888) and its sequel, Equality (1897), whose influence in the nineteenth century was enormous. His early works of fiction were Gothic; sentimental and labouredly influenced by Nathaniel ...
Bull, Reina M
(1924-2000) UK artist and book/magazine illustrator whose works were variously signed Sington (her birth surname), Reina, Janine, and RMB. Under the last byline she produced all of her SF Magazine work, in particular four memorable covers in 1951 and 1952, two apiece for New Worlds (Autumn 1951; November 1952) and Science Fantasy (Winter 1951; Spring 1952). Aside from being stylistically ...
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 ...