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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.
Site updated on 20 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 ...
Arno Press
US publisher specializing in facsimile reprint series. In 1975 Arno published a series of 62 sf titles (49 fiction and 13 nonfiction) edited by Robert Reginald and Douglas Menville. The fiction titles date mostly from the period 1885-1925; the nonfiction includes useful reprints of various bibliographic and critical works (including SF Horizons) originally published in very small editions. ...
Frankau, Pamela
(1908-1967) UK author who began publishing novels in 1927; daughter of Gilbert Frankau and his first wife Dorothea; known mainly for her work outside the sf field. Frankau's turbulent life was in some aspects interestingly parallel to that of James Tiptree Jr, though she did not disguise her identity. Several of her novels, such as The Bridge (1957), are fantasy; The Offshore Light (1952; ...
Bester, Alfred
(1913-1987) US editor and author, born in New York, his first two sf novels – on which his reputation increasingly depends – both being largely set in a vividly presented future New York. Educated in both humanities and sciences – including Psychology, perhaps the most important "science" in his sf – Bester entered sf when he submitted a story to Thrilling Wonder Stories. Mort ...
Yarbro, Chelsea Quinn
(1942-2025) US composer and author, more active in and better known for her occult and mystery tales than for her early sf, which is mostly restricted to work from the 1970s; she also wrote as Quinn Fawcett (with Bill Fawcett), Camille Gabor, Trystam Kith and Vanessa Pryor. After around 1980 she became (and remained) identified with the Saint-Germain sequence of fantasies about a sympathetic immortal Vampire of aristocratic ...
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 ...