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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 ...
Grey, Edward
Pseudonym of the unidentified author (? - ) of Concealed for Thirty Years: Being the Narrative of One E Grey (1890), a Lost Race novel set on an Island in the Pacific, where a culture of English colonists has survived since the Middle Ages. [JC]
Walter, W Grey
(1910-1977) American-born neurophysiologist, cyberneticist and author, in the UK from 1915. He was a pioneer, between 1936 and 1956, of the development and use of electroencephalography in the UK; his early popular study, The Living Brain (1953), was influential in its time. In the late 1940s he constructed early Robots known as tortoises, capable of locating a recharging point when their batteries ran low, and of being "taught" through simple ...
Rage: Carrie 2, The
Film (1999; vt Carrie 2). Red Bank Films/United Artists. Directed by Katt Shea. Produced by Paul Monash. Written by Rafael Moreu based on Carrie (1974) by Stephen King. Cast includes Emily Bergl, Amy Irving and Jason London. 104 minutes. Colour with some black-and-white scenes. / This film is a direct sequel to Brian De Palma's Carrie (1976), rather than a remake. It develops that Carrie White has ...
Butterfly Effect, The
Film (2004). New Line Cinema presents a Benderspink/FilmEngine production. Directed by J Mackye Gruber and Eric Bress. Written by Gruber, Bress. Cast includes John Patrick Amedori, Irene Gorovaia, Elden Henson, Ashton Kutcher, William Lee Scott, Amy Smart and Melora Walters. 113 minutes (115 minutes director's cut). Colour. / Young Evan Treborn, "Event Reborn" (Kutcher, Amedori), has a traumatic childhood in which he suffers periodic "blackouts" in times of stress, having no memory ...
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 ...