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Monday 20 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 ...
Key, Frank
Pseudonym of UK author and broadcaster Paul Byrne (1959-2019), whose early work appeared as limited-edition pamphlets – often self-illustrated – from the London-based Malice Aforethought Press which he co-founded in 1986 with Maxim Décharné (also published by the press). The first to be of genre interest, if tangentially, is perhaps Forty Visits to the Worm Farm (1987 chap). Key's stories tend towards surrealism and ...
Swierczynski, Duane
(1972- ) US journalist, Comics writer and author, who began to publish work of genre interest with "Life during Death" in Dark Planet for 6 July 1998. He has almost exclusively concentrated on nonfiction, mostly on criminals and criminality, a focus that dominates his fiction, including the Charlie Hardie sequence beginning with Fun and Games (2011) [none of this listed below]. Between 2007 and 2017 he was active in ...
Shadows of Saturn
US Online Magazine and Semiprozine produced by Peter Burtis, Intervale, New Hampshire which ran for just three issues, April/May to August/September 2005. The magazine was dedicated to "dark science fiction, fantasy and slipstream stories with horror elements", according to its now defunct website, and the contents of the three issues certainly emphasized the dark and fantastic. James S Dorr's "City on Fire" (April/May 2005) ...
Eça de Queiróz
(1845-1900) Portuguese author, surname also given as Queirós, who normally signed his publications with surname only; most famous for the realist novels which dominated his career and established his reputation as a central literary figure in nineteenth-century Europe. His relatively infrequent works that may be described in terms of Fantastika include O Mandarim (1880 Diário de Portugal; exp 1880; ...
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 ...