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Tuesday 14 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 ...
Herrman, Louis
(1883-1980) UK-born zoologist and author, in South Africa from the early years of the twentieth century; he is the author of a Gulliver tale (see Jonathan Swift), In the Sealed Cave: Being a Modern Commentary on a Strange Discovery Made by Captain Lemuel Gulliver in the Year 1721 and Now Published from Manuscript Notes Recently Come to Light. A Scientific Fantasy (1935), the discovery being that of a tribe of ...
Old Scout, An
House Name for authors working for the Boys' Papers publisher, Frank Tousey. Of sf interest under this name is Lost in the Great Basin (5 October-30 November 1889 The Boys of New York as by Kit Clyde 1907), which sets an Underground Lost World within a Western frame; the inhabitants of this world boast a complex civilization, which does not save ...
Sam Moskowitz Archive Award
Award presented annually since 1998 (though with gaps) by First Fandom in memory of Sam Moskowitz, for excellence in collecting sf. Excellence is here understood as going beyond mere accumulation to the constructive use of a collection – as practised by Moskowitz himself – as the basis for biographical, Bibliographical, critical, historical and other ...
Halloween III: Season of the Witch
Film (1983). Dino De Laurentiis. Produced by Debra Hill, John Carpenter. Directed by Tommy Lee Wallace. Written by Wallace (but primarily by Nigel Kneale, uncredited). Cast includes Tom Atkins, Stacey Nelkin and Dan O'Herlihy. 98 minutes. Colour. / Not at all a true sequel to the "stalk and slash" Halloween films, this is a horror film with an sf rationale. Crazed Irish entrepreneur Cochran (O'Herlihy), ...
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 ...