SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Saturday 18 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.
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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 ...
Del Picchia, Menotti
(1892-1988) Brazilian Recognized for his work as poet, painter, author and member of the Brazilian Academy of Letters, hia participated in Brazil's Modern Art Week in 1922, a movement influenced by the European vanguard in challenging traditional ideas and tastes in art and literature. In 1927, along with Cassiano Ricardo and Plínio Salgado, Del Picchia founded the conservative modernist group known as Verde-Amarelo, which celebrated Brazil's Portuguese ...
Gilchrist, John
Pseudonym of UK author Jerome Gardner (1932- ), author of five novels, each mildly Dystopian, for Robert Hale Limited: Birdbrain (1975), set in a Soviet-occupied Britain; Out North (1975), in which the prospect of travel to the Moon attracts would-be astronauts; Lifeline (1976), whose venue is a now Russia-dominated United States of ...
4D Man
Film (1959; vt The Evil Force UK; vt Master of Terror US). Fairview/Universal. Coproduced and directed by Irwin Shortess Yeaworth Jr. Written by Theodore Simonson, Cy Chermak, from an idea by Jack H Harris. Cast includes James Congdon, Robert Lansing and Lee Meriwether. 85 minutes. Colour. / A small, interesting film made by the same producer/director team, Jack H Harris and Yeaworth, that had already made The Blob (1958). ...
Pandemic
A plague is a disease that travels from somewhere else. Many afflictions which are difficult to transmit, like leprosy, or the legion of cancers, are not normally described here, therefore, even loosely, as plagues, and are not treated in this encyclopedia under the Pandemic heading, a term here applied to contagions that invade. Various pestilences – including bubonic or pneumonic plague – do of course meet that loose criterion. Their pedigree is deep; invasive plagues have ...
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 ...