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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 ...
Time of the Wolf
French/German film (2003); original title Le Temps du loup. Arte France Cinéma, Bavaria Film, Canal+, Centre National de la Cinématographie, France 3 Cinéma, Wega Film. Written and directed by Michael Haneke (1942- ) Cast includes Lucas Biscombe, Patrice Chéreau, Béatrice Dalle, Anaïs Demoustier, Daniel Duval, Olivier Gourmet, Isabelle Huppert, Benoît ...
Kerr, A W
(1848-1934) Scottish author of Space: A Mirage (1913), in which an extremely early version of the Galactic Empire is sketched, though in allegorical terms involving spiritually advanced "celestials" who watch and ward over Earth, despite opposition from the Sardonics who inhabit a planet of that name. [JC]
McCormack, Mike
(1965- ) UK-born author, in Ireland from childhood, active from the mid 1990s. Some short stories stretch past the mundane, but very little of his work extends into the fantastic until Notes from a Coma (2005). It is a Near Future Dystopian excursus on the nature of Crime and Punishment whose protagonist, locked into a coma as an involuntary participant ...
Davies, Paul
(1946- ) UK physicist, science writer and sf author whose scientific nonfiction is perhaps more distinguished than his sf. His novel Fireball (1987) has Antimatter pellets impacting Earth and creating chaos; although their actual source is an Alien spacecraft, they are interpreted by the USA as a Soviet weapon. The ideas are interesting, the thriller elements routine. However, his academic science ...
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 ...