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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 ...
Publishing
The history of sf publishing is, in its widest sense, the History of SF itself; this entry, however, is concerned with a much more recent phenomenon, the emergence of Genre SF as an identifiable and distinctive category of publishing, and therefore concentrates on US firms. A great amount of sf was published in the UK 1900-1950, but, although some transplanted US genre sf appeared, until about 1950 most UK firms published sf ...
Moxley, F Wright
(1889-1937) US lawyer and author whose interesting though somewhat overblown Satire, Red Snow (1930), tells of Near Future Disaster in 1935, a red, snowlike precipitation which causes worldwide sterility, and of the subsequent social breakdown. The tale itself comprises an almost telegraphic Future History told through the experiences of one individual who ...
Barceló, Miquel
(1948-2021) Spanish computer-systems and aeronautical engineering professor at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia, translator, editor and author; he also directed the polytechnic's PhD program on Sustainability, Technology and Humanism. He founded and edited the Fanzine Kandama from 1980 until its discontinuation in 1984, publishing both translations of noteworthy English-language authors and Spanish-language authors who would ...
Ludwig, Boris
An Australian pseudonym or more likely a House Name briefly used on two unremarkable Scientific Thrillers titles, each of novella length: Jaws of Death (1948 chap) deals with the Disaster that ensues when iron-eating grubs are found by criminals in the Australian outback; and The Whistle of Doom (1949 chap) deals with the consequences of trying to use the eponymous ...
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 ...