SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Tuesday 21 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 20 April 2026
Sponsor of the day: John Howard
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 ...
Hardy, Phil
(1945-2014) UK journalist, business consultant and expert on rock music and film, on both of which subjects he has published widely, having been founding editor of Studio Vista's Rockbooks series and of the magazine Music Business. Among his notable books on film those most relevant to sf are The Aurum Film Encyclopedia: Science Fiction (1984; vt Science Fiction: The Complete Film Sourcebook 1984; vt The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction Movies ...
Bethke, Bruce
(1955- ) US author best known for his short stories, in particular his first professional publication, "Cyberpunk" in Amazing for November 1983, which appeared there after circulating in manuscript and almost certainly inspiring Gardner Dozois's use of the term Cyberpunk to designate the new movement, in an exclamatory fashion ironically distinct from Bethke's own jaundiced view ...
Christopher, Edgar Earl
(? -? ) US author of The Invisibles (1903), narrated in retrospect from the Near Future, as an American-based secret society, The Invisible Hand, advances its plot to overthrow the Czarist government of Russia, aided by various Inventions of its Scientist membership, including an advanced submarine, which has been constructed by the Invisibles's leader, a ...
Colbeck, Alfred
(1858-1933) UK Methodist minister and author active from before 1900 as an author of magazine fiction, mostly for boys; When the Earth Swung Over: A Strange Story of the Mysterious White People of the Napo (1926; vt When the Earth Swung Over 2022) is a Lost World tale set in South America, where the survivors of the sinking of Atlantis have established a civilization. [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 ...