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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 ...
Meredith, Richard C
(1937-1979) US author who began publishing sf with "The Slugs" for Knight magazine in November 1962. His first novel, The Sky Is Filled with Ships (1969), is an effective Space Opera in which colonies revolt against a tyrannical corporation. We All Died at Breakaway Station (January-March 1969 Amazing; 1969) is a bleak, well-crafted space opera in a kind of Alamo setting, where a scarred ...
Substance, The
Film (2024). Working Title Films, Blacksmith, A Good Story. Written and directed by Coralie Fargeat. Cast includes Demi Moore, Margaret Qualley and Dennis Quaid. 141 minutes. Colour. / On her fiftieth birthday, former film star Elisabeth Sparkle (Moore) is unceremoniously dismissed from her job as a fitness guru on a morning television show by sleazy boss Harvey (Quaid), who is looking for someone "young and hot". On her way home she crashes her car, and in hospital is given by a ...
Kornberg, Julia
(1996- ) Argentine author in US for some years. Her first novel, Atomizado Berlin (2021; trans by author and Jack Rockwell as Berlin Atomized 2024), anatomizes the lives of three Argentinian siblings from their early adulthood around 2009 through the following decades of planetary and personal stress; they are urban, Jewish (see Religion), occasionally rambunctious; but the world ...
Nesbit, E
(1858-1924) UK playwright, poet and author, who also wrote as Fabian Bland and E Bland (the latter being her husband's name, an unknown proportion of whose signed work was by her); she was a founder of the Fabian Society in 1884. Most of her oeuvre, over a wide-ranging career that extended from the 1880s until after World War One, can be considered under three headings: the nonfantastic adult fiction (not discussed or listed here); the supernatural and weird fiction, some of which contains ...
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 ...