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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.
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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 ...
Hamit, Francis
(1944- ) US screenwriter, journalist, playwright and author, in the U S Army Security Agency in the 1960s, multiply active from the middle of that decade. Several nonfantastic novels precede his first sf novel, Starmen (2024), which examines the artefactual nature of the American West as mythologized in the Western. Under the command of a mysterious woman, a giant Balloon carrying British ...
Campbell, Ramsey
(1946- ) UK author, primarily of Horror, son-in-law of A Bertram Chandler; born John Ramsey Campbell but legally Ramsey Campbell since 1985; he has also published as Montgomery Comfort and Jay Ramsey, and under the House Names Carl Dreadstone and E K Leyton. His earliest work dates from 1957 to 1963 ...
Osborn, E Margaret
(1902-2006) UK-born poet, playwright and author, in Canada from 1921; her sf novel, Short Visit to Ergon (1971), is a moderately conventional Utopia set on the planet Ergon, where life is good. [JC]
Paterson, Don
(1963- ) Scottish academic, editor, musician, composer and author, active from the late 1980s. His Poetry, which has been assembled in several collections beginning with Nil Nil (coll 1993 chap), is vigorous, formally inventive, various. Of specific sf interest is Zonal (coll of linked poems 2020 chap), a set of explorations into something like autobiography through the lenses 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 ...