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Monday 20 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.
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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 ...
Hotston, Stewart
(? - ) UK author who began to publish work of genre interest with "Haecceity" in La Femme (anth 2014) edited by Ian Whates. His sf series, the Oligarchy sequence beginning with A Family War (2016), is set in a high-Technology Dystopian fairly-distant Near Future ruled by an arrogant ...
Key, Eugene G
(1907-1968) US academic, associate professor of engineering at East Los Angeles College, and author who began publishing work of genre interest with "The Red Ace" in Air Wonder Stories for February 1930, a tale involving aerial piracy and Antigravity. His sf collection, Mars Mountain (coll 1935), published by William L Crawford's semi-professional company Fantasy ...
Mackel, Kathryn
(1950- ) US screenwriter and author who writes for adult and Young Adult readers as Kathryn Mackel, and for younger readers as Kathy Mackel. Her work throughout is infused with Christian beliefs and advocacies, which govern her deployment of sf tropes, so that events initially seen as sf soon become Equipoisal between sf and supernatural fiction before unfolding in terms of dramas where the ...
Williams, Sean
(1967- ) Australian author who began publishing work of genre interest with "Light Bodies Falling" in Aurealis for October 1991, and has since published a number of stories, the balance here, as with his longer work, being some sf but rather more fantasy. This work has been assembled as Doorway to Eternity (coll 1995), A View Before Dying (coll 1998 chap), New Adventures in Sci-Fi (coll 1999) and ...
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 ...