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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 ...
Hidden World, The
US Pulp-format magazine, 16 issues, Spring 1961 to Winter 1964, published and edited by Raymond A Palmer. This was a quarterly publication, handling Shaver-Mystery and flying-saucer (see UFOs) material, and purporting to be science fact rather than science fiction. #1 elaborated on the Shaverian "Mantongue" language. Circulation had by the end dropped from 10,000 to ...
Deadly Bees, The
Film (1967). Amicus Productions. Directed by Freddie Francis. Produced by Max J Rosenberg and Milton Subotsky. Written by Robert Bloch and Anthony Marriott, loosely (see below) based on A Taste for Honey (1941; vt A Taste for Murder 1955) by Gerald Heard, credited as H F Heard. Cast includes Guy Doleman, Catherine Finn, Frank Finlay and Suzanna Leigh. 83 minutes. Colour. / An unnamed London ...
Southern, Terry
(1924-1995) US journalist, screenwriter and author, of greatest sf interest for his brief but seminal involvement (16 November-28 December 1962) in the transformation of Peter George's original novel, Two Hours to Doom (1958) as by Peter Bryant, into the black Satire Dr. Strangelove Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) directed (and in part written) by ...
Murphy, Andrew C
(? - ) US author of Steel Sky (2003), a Post-Holocaust Dystopia set Underground in an imprisoning Keep, where the surviving population undergoes enforced estrangements. It feels like the End of the World. [JC]
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 ...