SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Wednesday 15 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 ...
Maelstrom Speculative Fiction
US low-paying Print Magazine published and edited by David L Felts, Palm Harbor, Florida. It ran for eight issues from Summer 1998 to October 2001, and was in a slim (usually between 28 and 32 pages) large review size (see Magazines) format. Like many Amateur Magazines that emerged in the 1990s, the editor wanted to publish material that was out of the ordinary and would make the reader ...
Skyhorse, Brando
(1973- ) US editor and author whose complex family past has been transformational significance in his work, as unpacked in a memoir, Take This Man (2014); he was born Brando Kelly Ulloa, of Mexican-American parentage, but raised in the belief that he was the son of Paul Skyhorse Johnson, a Native American activist. Issues of Identity – of specifically American identity, which is to say problems inherent to a nation ...
Terrorvision
Film (1986). Altar/Empire. Executive producer Charles Band. Directed by Ted Nicolaou. Written by Nicolaou. Cast includes Chad Allen, Diane Franklin, Gerrit Graham, Jonathan Gries and Mary Woronov. 83 minutes. Colour. / This lurid exploitation-movie-cum-satire has good moments. A hungry Alien beast first appears on the television screen, then materializes in the house, of wife-swapping vulgarians, a ...
Cheynell, Francis
(1608-1665) UK minister, controversialist from a Presbyterian point of view, and author; his Proto SF Satire, Aulicus His Dream, of the Kings Sudden Comming to London (1644 chap), is one of the first texts in English to be set, even notionally, in the future. The pamphlet complicatedly attacks the Royalist newspaper, Mercurius Aulicus, issues of which were routinely smuggled into London, ...
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 ...