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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 ...
Cărtărescu, Mircea
(1956- ) Romanian teacher, poet and author, active from around 1978. He is of some sf interest for his first novel, Visul ["The Dream"] (1989; uncensored version, vt Nostalgia 1993; trans Julian Semilian 2005), where an exorbitant use of the topoi of Fantastika are assembled (and re-assembled through the five disparate sections of the work) into a kaleidoscopic rendering of the ...
Broomhead, Reginald
(? -? ) UK author of A Voice from Mars: Adventure and Romance (1923), whose protagonists engage in adventures on Mars, which much resembles our home planet, though a successful Utopian civilization seems to flourish (no details are provided). The tale was written for young readers. [JC]
McManus, L
Working name of Irish author Charlotte Elizabeth McManus (circa 1853-1944), an historian and nationalist whose learning and convictions were normally expressed through the historical romance. In her one sf novel, The Professor in Erin (publication date unknown Sinn Féin; 1918), a German professor exploring Irish ruins knocks his head and finds himself in an Alternate World, where an Irish Utopia ...
Rees, Rod
(1948- ) UK author, a former accountant, whose sf debut is the Demi-Monde tetralogy comprising The Demi-Monde: Winter (2011), The Demi-Monde: Spring (2012), The Demi-Monde: Summer (2013) and The Demi-Monde: Fall (2013). The Demi-Monde is a highly detailed Virtual Reality sustained by an advanced Quantum Computer and ostensibly designed ...
Langford, David
(1953- ) UK author, critic, editor, publisher and sf fan, in the latter capacity recipient of 21 Hugo awards for fan writing – some of the best of his several hundred pieces are assembled as Let's Hear It for the Deaf Man (coll 1992 chap US; much exp vt The Silence of the Langford 1996; exp 2015 ebook) as Dave Langford, edited by Ben Yalow – plus five Best Fanzine Hugos ...