SF Encyclopedia Home Page
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.
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 ...
Flash Fiction
A currently popular term for very short stories, formerly known as short-shorts or vignettes. Definitions vary; the acceptable length may approach 1000 words but is generally much less. Several publishers of Print Magazines liked short-shorts as a means of filling awkward spaces; they have grown more rather than less popular in the online twenty-first century, where Twitter users were long accustomed to compress significant meaning into 140-character tweets. ...
Porges, Irwin
(1909-1998) US author, brother of Arthur Porges, who collaborated with him on at least one story: "A Touch of Sun" (April 1959 Fantastic). Irwin Porges wrote five volumes of nonfiction, those of sf relevance being the literary biographies Edgar Allan Poe (1963) and Edgar Rice Burroughs: The Man Who Created Tarzan (1975). [JC/DRL]. /
Nayuta
Japanese animated OVA (1986). Circus Production. Based on the Manga by Sasaki Junko. Directed by Masami Hata. Written by Akiyoshi Sakai. Voice cast includes Akira Kamiya, Minako Fujishiro, Rihoko Yoshida and Toshio Furukawa. 80 minutes. Colour. / Schoolgirl Nayuta (Minako) meets Afghan refugee Kiro (Akira), who is able to Teleport thanks to a tiara or "Jarun" he wears: this came from an ...
Hay, John
Working name of Australian author and farmer John Warwick Dalrymple-Hay (1928- ). In his sf novel, The Invasion (1968), World War Three begins after a US test missile devastates China, whose retaliation includes a nuclear attack on the coastal cities of Australia. Inland survivors band together to resist the invaders. [JC]
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 ...