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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 ...
Martin, Peter
(? - ) A name long thought to have been the working name of UK author Peter Martin Leckie; but members of Leckie's family have stated that Peter Martin Leckie was not this Peter Martin. The name was used for the sf novel, Summer in Three Thousand: Not a Prophecy – A Parable (1946), in which a progressive Utopian World Island state is contrasted with a war-torn conservative ...
Sarti, Ron
(? - ) US academic and author of The Chronicles of Scar sequence, comprising The Chronicles of Scar (1996), Legacy of the Ancients (1997) and The Lanterns of God (1998); set in a balkanized Ruined Earth version of America, the tale is constructed along lines familiar in contemporary fantasy, for the young protagonist, the eponymous Scar, is a Hidden Monarch (see The ...
Kayser, Martha
(1871-? ) US author whose Utopia, The Aerial Flight to the Realm of Peace (1922), features a form of Space Flight (see also Balloons) to a planet much like Earth except that everyone is united in a kind of conflict-free family inspired by conflict-free worship in a single Supreme Being. Faith (1931; rev vt Heaven Is Here 1938 as M C Kayser) as ...
Thomas, Chauncey
(1822-1898) US author of a Technocratic Utopia, The Crystal Button; Or Adventures of Paul Prognosis in the Forty-Ninth Century (1891); the text was apparently drafted in the 1870s, and only submitted for publication after the success of Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward (1888), when it was edited by George Houghton (of Houghton, Mifflin and Company). The protagonist, ...
Robinson, Roger
(1943- ) UK computer programmer, bibliographer and publisher, active in UK Fandom for many years. The Writings of Henry Kenneth Bulmer (1983 chap; rev 1984 chap) is an exhaustive Bibliography of one of the most prolific sf writers, Kenneth Bulmer, and Who's Hugh?: An SF Reader's Guide to Pseudonyms (1987) is similarly exhaustive in its ...