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Tuesday 21 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 20 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 ...
Allen, Robert
Working name of US author Allen Robert Dodd (1887-1947), whose only sf novel, Captain Gardiner of the International Police: A Secret Service Novel of the Future (1916), is set 60 years after World War One, when an International Federation (see Pax Aeronautica) has long governed most of the world but for the sinister East (see Yellow Peril), whose plots are foiled by the ...
Mecha
In this encyclopedia, a pilotable or remote-operable machine, often bipedal or otherwise humanoid in form, encompassing the city-stomping war machines of Anime and the Powered Armour suits of numerous sf shows. / Strictly speaking, the term mecha originates in Japanese from the English "mechanism", and refers to any form of machinery. A concentration on the workings or design of a particular machine is not uncommon in ...
Marmell, Ari
(1974- ) US author, mostly of series, beginning with the Corvis Rebaine sequence comprising The Conqueror's Shadow (2010) and The Warlord's Legacy (2011), which is military fantasy with sf touches in the descriptions of gear. Of marginally more direct sf interest is Iron Kingdoms Chronicle: In Thunder Forged: The Fall of Llael: Book One (2013), a Tie to the Videogame ...
Grant, Matthew
(? - ) UK author whose only sf novel is the unremarkable Space Opera Hyper-Drive (1962). [DRL]
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 ...