SF Encyclopedia Home Page
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.
Site updated on 20 April 2026
Sponsor of the day: John Howard
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 ...
Underwood-Miller Inc
US Small Press founded in 1976 by Pennsylvania-based Chuck Miller and Tim Underwood, who worked in California. Their first book, a first hardcover edition of Jack Vance's The Dying Earth (1950; their edition 1976) almost accidentally set them on a course which would identify them with that author, many of whose works, new ...
Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers
Board and counter Wargame (1976). Avalon Hill. Designed by Randall Reed. / Starship Troopers is a simulation of the fictional reality depicted in Robert A Heinlein's 1959 Military SF novel of the same name. Its gameplay concentrates on what has perhaps proved to be the most influential feature of the book, despite its enthusiastic political evangelism: infantry combat between ...
Beason, Doug
(1953- ) US author and officer in the USAF with a PhD in physics who began publishing sf with "The Man I'll Never Be" in Amazing for May 1987. Return to Honor (1989), Assault on Alpha Base (1990) and Strike Eagle (1991) are Technothrillers, but Lifeline (1990) with Kevin J Anderson is of sf interest, and marked both ...
Winch, E
Working name of New-Zealand-born author Marie Elspeth Agnes Winch(1895-1939), in the UK from childhood. Of some sf interest is The Mountain of Gold (1928), a Lost Race tale set in South America, where Incan remains lead deep into the mountains, where a "primitive" Indian "tribe", which has established a Utopian society, is condescendingly discovered, along with Apes as Human foes, and an ...
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 ...