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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 ...
Fane, Julian
(1927-2009) UK author of literary bent whose Dystopia, Revolution Island (1979), was one of the last UK visions of a union-dominated left-wing future. It was published just before the incoming administration of Margaret Thatcher (1979-1990) put an end, for the century of its publication, to the local relevance of this category of the dreadful warning. [JC]
Rowe, John Gabriel
(1873-1956) UK editor, screenwriter and author, mostly of tales for boys, though in his later career he published some modestly adoring biographies of British figures, all men; he also wrote as by Mortimer Austin, James Bright, Gregory Dunstan, Arthur Ferris, John Gabriel (this may have been the real name of a different author), Charles Lewis, Charles A Ransome, Alice E Rowe and T B Walters. He was active from before 1890. The range of his work of sf interest has not been definitely ...
Easton, John
(? -? ) UK author, probably not the John Easton whose experiences of active service during World War One were reflected in Three Personal Records of the War (1929) with R H Mottram and Eric Partridge. Matheson Fever: The Story of a Curse (1928) is a supernatural fiction set in India. Easton is of sf interest for Red Sap (1930; rev 1938), a ...
Gilman, Felix
(1974- ) UK lawyer and author, in US for some time, most of his work being fantasy, including his first series, the Arjun sequence beginning with Thunderer (2007). Much of the tale is set in a City under invasion from gnomic flying Monsters, opposed by Arjun, a recent arrival in a world whose clockwork intricacies evoke the early work of China ...
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 ...