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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 ...
Dixon, Royal
(1885-1962) US child actor, botanist, journalist and author, known for having founded the First Church for Animal Rights in 1921 after publishing several books advocating a quasi-pantheistic devotion to all forms of life, beginning with The Human Side of Plants (1914). Of sf interest is The Ape of Heaven (1936), an Apes as Human tale in which a benevolent culture of white human-like apes is found in Africa, one of whom saves a ...
Love War, The
Made-for-tv film (1970). Paramount/ABC-TV. Directed by George McCowan. Written by Guerdon Trueblood, David Kidd. Cast includes Harry Basch, Lloyd Bridges, Angie Dickinson and Dan Travanti. 74 minutes. Colour. / Six Aliens from two warring planets arrive on Earth for a duel to the death to decide which of those planets is the victor. Four are eliminated; one survivor (Bridges) opts to try to stop the fight, remain on Earth, merge with the natives, and have a ...
Fisher, Lou
Working name of US technical author and author Louis Fisher (1940- ) who, during a twenty-year career writing IBM computer manuals, began publishing sf with "Triggerman" in Galaxy for September 1973. His first novel, Sunstop 8 (1978), is a Space Opera; his second, The Blue Ice Pilot (1986) as Lou Fisher, features a space war made possible by developments in ...
Shriek
Letter-size saddle-stapled Cinema magazine. Publisher: Acme News Company Incorporated. Editor credited as "Frank N Stein". Four issues, May 1965 to Winter 1967. Publication was nominally quarterly, but in fact erratic. / This was a venture by magazine distributor Acme News into the Movie Monster magazine field; though short-lived it was of good quality, with well-written articles and Interviews. ...
Robinson, Roger
(1943- ) UK computer programmer, bibliographer and publisher, active in UK Fandom for many years. The Writings of Henry Kenneth Bulmer (1983 chap; rev 1984 chap) is an exhaustive Bibliography of one of the most prolific sf writers, Kenneth Bulmer, and Who's Hugh?: An SF Reader's Guide to Pseudonyms (1987) is similarly exhaustive in its ...