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Friday 17 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 ...
Riesenberg, Sidney H
(1885-1971) US art curator, painter and illustrator, active mainly in the latter capacity from around 1905, his first work of genre interest being the cover for Harry Lincoln Sayler's The Airship Boys in the Barren Lands (1910), the first of several he executed for the Airship Boys series. During the later years of World War One, Riesenberg concentrated on poster art, mainly for the United States ...
Bell, Ted
(1946-2023) US advertising executive (ending in 2001 as Creative Director at Young and Rubicam) and author, best known for the Lord Alex Hawke series of nonfantastic political thrillers beginning with Hawke (2003) [series not listed below]. He is of sf interest for the Young Adult Nick McIver Time Adventure series beginning with Nick of Time: An Adventure Through Time (2000), whose young protagonist lives with his brave ...
McDermot, Murtagh
Pseudonym of an unidentified UK or Irish author (? -? ) whose satirical Moon-voyage novel, A Trip to the Moon (1727 chap) [for subtitle see Checklist], describes various remarkable sights and beings, initially in the Fantastic Voyage mode of Jonathan Swift, as "McDermot" takes ship to Tenerife before undergoing his abrupt transit into space; the ...
Satellite in the Sky
Film (1956). Tridelta Productions. Directed by Paul Dickson, produced by Edward J Danziger and Harry Lee Danziger. Written by John Mather, J T McIntosh and Edith Dell. Cast includes Brian Forbes, Thea Gregory, Jimmy Hanley, Lois Maxwell, Keiron Moore and Donald Wolfit. 85 minutes. Colour. / A routine Space Flight melodrama in which the first Spaceship sent into orbit with a captain ...
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 ...