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Wednesday 22 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 ...
Hecht, Ben
(1894-1964) US journalist, playwright, screenwriter, publisher and author, active from 1910 in Chicago with Bohemian literary circles as a journalist before becoming exceedingly successful in Hollywood as a screenwriter, the first of his seventy or more scripts dating from the late 1920s, all nonfantastic, many for films that have become famous. His writings are particularly notable for their cynicism, Iconoclasm and irony. Many of his short stories border on ...
Saturn [magazine]
US Digest-size magazine. Published by Robert C Sproul as Candar Publishing Company. Edited by Sproul with editorial consultant Donald A Wollheim, who actually selected the stories and assembled the issues. Five issues March 1957 to March 1958 (but see below for later incarnations). / Considering some of the contributors, there was surprisingly little of interest in the magazine: Harlan ...
King of Tokyo
Board Game (2011). Iello. Designed by Richard Garfield. / King of Tokyo is in many ways the absolute opposite of his prior invention, the Collectible Card Game Magic The Gathering. King of Tokyo is a board game that is quick and easy to play, and does not require any form of collecting or accruing new pieces, cards or upgrades. It is a good ...
Sandes, John
(1863-1938) Irish-born journalist and author, in Australia from 1887, noted for a determinedly patriotic, Christian form of Australian nationalism; he also wrote as by Don Delaney. His first novel, Love and the Aeroplane: A Tale of Tomorrow (1910), is set in a distant Near Future Australia transformed by advances in Transportation, with monorails and other innovations. The story itself is a somewhat congested ...
Nicholls, Peter
(1939-2018) Australian editor and author, primarily a critic and historian of sf through his creation and editing of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction [see below]; resident in the UK 1970-1988, in Australia from 1988; worked as an academic in English literature (1962-1968, 1971-1977), scripted television documentaries, was a Harkness Fellow in Film-making (1968-1970) in the USA, worked as a publisher's editor (1982-1983), often broadcast film and book reviews on BBC Radio from 1974 and ...