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Thursday 16 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 ...
Fontenelle, Bernard le Bovyer de
(1657-1757) French man of letters whose work pointed forward to the Age of Reason; nephew of the dramatist Pierre Corneille (1606-1684). He wrote much, and one of his most important books became a seminal influence on Proto SF: Entretiens sur la pluralité des mondes habités (1686; exp 1687; trans Sir W D Knight as A Discourse on the Plurality of Worlds 1687; new trans Aphra Behn as ...
Knights of Guinevere
Australian/US animated online series (2025). Glitch Productions. Created and written by Zach Marcus, John Bailey Owen and Dana Terrace. Directed by Dana Terrace. Voice cast includes Zelda Khan Black, SungWon Cho, Lauren Kong, Michaela Laws, Erin Nicole Lundquist and Eden Riegel. One 26-minute pilot episode to date. Colour / Orville Park (Cho) shows his child Olivia (Kong/Lundquist) her inheritance: a magnificent new ...
Zweig, Stefan
(1881-1942) Austrian biographer, journalist, playwright and author whose interbellum reputation is now unfairly faded; his Suicide (along with his wife's), which occurred when they both had begun to think World War Two would be won by the Allies, has been treated in hindsight as a sign of misplaced despair rather than – as clearly demonstrated in ...
Kramer, Kathryn
(1945- ) US academic and author who began publishing work of genre interest with "The New Ice Age" for Chomo-Uri in 1980; her first novel, A Handbook for Visitors from Outer Space (1984), is set in an unspecified but Near Future land – which turns out to be New Jersey – in a state of constant War with an unknown enemy. / Kramer should not be confused with Kathryn ...
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 ...