SF Encyclopedia Home Page
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.
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 ...
Cosmic Brotherhood Association
Official English translation of the Uchū Yūkō Kyōkai, an organization founded in Japan in 1957 for the purpose of establishing contact with Aliens. Swept up in the UFO fervour of the era, aviation journalist Yūsuke Matsumura derived a strong inspiration from the flying-saucer cult of George van Tassel in the United States, suggesting that aliens could be contacted through ...
Cox, Arthur Jean
(1929-2016) US fan and author who began to publish work of genre interest with "The Twilight Planet" (June 1951 F&SF) as Arthur J Cox; he also wrote as Ralph Carghill, Jean Cox, Gene Cross, William Dean and John Thames Rokesmith. His first novel was Nude in Orbit (1968) as by Gene Cross, a spicy "adult" murder mystery in which the titular naked woman is found floating in space (see Crime and Punishment). A ...
Thomas, Craig
(1942-2011) Welsh author of Technothrillers, one of the earliest practitioners of the form; of his eighteen novels, those of most sf interest comprise the Firefox sequence – Firefox (1977) and Firefox Down (1983) – about a Near-Future Russian fighter, the MiG-31, which boasts both anti-radar and a Weapons system operated by thought waves (see ...
Reynolds, Anthony
(? - ) Australian author who has worked for Games Workshop, which owns the Warhammer 40,000 universe, and who has written Ties for that universe, beginning with Warhammer: Mark of Chaos (2006). Of more sf interest are his contributions to the Warhammer 40,000 subseries, beginning with Warhammer 40,000: Dark Apostle (2007); his tales revel duly in the bleak and ...
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 ...