SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Wednesday 15 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
Sponsor of the day: Andy Richards of Cold Tonnage Books
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 ...
Wijeratne, Yudhanjaya
(1992- ) Sri Lankan author who began publishing work of genre interest with "Dreadnaught" in The Expanding Universe: Volume Three (anth 2017) edited by Craig Martelle. His first novel, the Near Future Numbercaste (2017 ebook), embroils its protagonist in a vast information-resource firm called NumberCorp whose goal – slightly anticipating the third season of Westworld ...
Rhode, John
Best known pseudonym of UK author Major Cecil John Charles Street (1884-1964), in active service during World War One who wrote about 145 detective novels (see Crime and Punishment) as by Miles Burton, John Rhode or Cecil Waye. Julian Symons called Rhode the "master of the humdrum" (i.e. puzzle-focused) mystery, not intended as a compliment; another mystery author and critic, H R F ...
Edmondson, G C
Working name of US translator and author Garry Cotton Edmondson (1922-1995) for all his writing except his Westerns, which are as by Kelly P Gast, J B Masterson and Jake Logan, and also excepting a collaborations with Andrew J Offutt writing together as John Cleve. His first published sf was Blessed Are the Meek (September 1955 Astounding; 2007 ebook); he was ...
Deighton, Len
Working name of UK illustrator and author Leonard Cyril Deighton (1929-2026), mostly not resident in Britain after 1969; author of spy novels, cookery books and some other nonfiction, but still perhaps best known for early espionage thrillers like The Ipcress File (1962), the first of the Secret File sequence which features the same undisciplined and unnamed secret agent, and the subsequent Funeral in Berlin (1964). The fourth volume of the series, ...
Robinson, Roger
(1943- ) UK computer programmer, bibliographer and publisher, active in UK Fandom for many years. The Writings of Henry Kenneth Bulmer (1983 chap; rev 1984 chap) is an exhaustive Bibliography of one of the most prolific sf writers, Kenneth Bulmer, and Who's Hugh?: An SF Reader's Guide to Pseudonyms (1987) is similarly exhaustive in its ...