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Tuesday 14 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 14 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 ...
Walker, Rysa
Pseudonym of US author (1961- ) of the Young Adult Chronos Files beginning with Time's Twisted Arrow (2012 ebook; vt Timebound 2014), in which Time Travel and romance are intertwined through the machinations of a religious fanatic. [JC]
Clee, Mona A
(1952- ) US author who began writing work of genre interest with "Encounter on the Ladder" in Universe 15 (anth 1986) edited by Terry Carr, and who, after a gap, turned to longer forms after publishing five further stories. Branch Point (1995) is an Alternate History for the Young Adult market, in which a group of young protagonists use ...
Jensen, Reidar
(1942- ) Norwegian journalist and author, regarded as an important voice of New Wave sf in the 1970s. Jensen's first published story, "Den siste natten i hele verden" ["The Last Night in All the World"] (1969), received the Norwegian first prize in a sf contest arranged by three Scandinavian newspapers: Dagbladet (Norway), Politiken (Denmark) and Dagens Nyheter (Sweden). "Forsidepiker smiler aldri to ganger" ["Cover Girls ...
Fontenay, Charles L
(1917-2007) US newspaperman and author, born in Brazil and raised in Tennessee from infancy, where he worked as a newspaperman for about half a century. He was a member of the If stable from the publication of his first story, "Disqualified", in September 1954, which he began much later to assemble in the incomplete Here, There and Elsewhen sequence of collected stories; he also wrote three somewhat routine sf novels over the next decade: Twice Upon a Time ...
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 ...