SF Encyclopedia Home Page
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 ...
Cox, Erle
(1873-1950) Australian author and journalist who began to publish fiction as early as 1908, though he was better known as a reviewer and columnist for The Argus and the Australasian 1918-1946, shifting to The Age from 1946. His best-known sf novel is Out of the Silence; a Romance (19 April-25 October 1919 The Argus; 1925; rev 1932; further rev, cut 1947), about the attempt by the female representative of an otherwise extinct super-race ...
British Fantasy Society
1. The first British Fantasy Society was sf-based and operated from 1942 to 1946. It was a precursor of the British Science Fiction Association founded in 1958: see this entry for further details. The Society's British Fantasy Society Bulletin (which see) was circulated with Futurian War Digest. / links / ...
Percival, Dr
Pseudonym or working name of C Percival (? -? ), author of The Flaming Sword: Being an Account of the Extraordinary Adventures and Discoveries of Dr Percival in the Wilds of Africa, Written by Himself (1894), a Lost World tale in which the narrator, who is not quick witted, discovers and combats mammoths and other creatures typical of Prehistoric SF, working out finally that he ...
SFRA Newsletter
US Digest-format magazine, the official newsletter, mostly monthly, of the Science Fiction Research Association; founded 1971, current, 215 issues to January/February 1995, edited by Fred Lerner (1971-1974), Beverly Friend (1974-1978), Roald Tweet (1978-1981), Elizabeth Anne Hull (1981-1984), Richard W Miller (1984-1987), Robert A ...
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 ...