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Thursday 16 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 ...
Schneyer, Kenneth
(1960- ) US lecturer in the law and author who began to publish work of genre interest with "Calibration" in Nature Physics for July 2008. Much of his work has been assembled as The Law & the Heart: Stories to Bend the Mind & Soul (coll 2014), several of the tales included focusing on the interactions between law (see also Crime and Punishment; Thought Experiment) ...
Grant, I F
(1887-1983) Scottish patron, ethnographer and author. In 1935 on the island of Iona, she founded the Highland Folk Museum to present her findings and convictions about the high culture attained by the Gaels; it was later housed in Kingussie, Highland region. Of sf interest is A Candle in the Hills (1926), set in a Near Future Britain after a savage takeover by Communist forces, which are resolutely opposed by an ultimately successful resistance ...
Marr, John S
(1940- ) US doctor, epidemiologist and author whose official positions have included Director of the New York City Bureau of Communicable Diseases and State Epidemiologist of Virginia (retired 2006). His medical expertise fuelled the Disaster thriller The Black Death (1977) with Gwyneth Cravens, centred on an outbreak of pneumonic plague in New York, and the race ...
Prime Directive
Item of Terminology popularized through the original television Star Trek, in which the Prime Directive – also known as Starfleet General Order #1 – prohibits interference with the "normal" development of a planetary or other culture; inevitably this is violated several times in the series and its sequels. Jack Williamson first introduced the term to sf in "With Folded Hands ..." ...
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 ...