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Thursday 16 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 ...
Kranz, E Kirker
(1949- ) US teacher and author of The Clouded Mirror (1971), a Time Travel tale featuring a Time Machine that remains physically immobile, though the worlds revealed, as the traveller passes hither and yon, vary widely. [JC]
Lolina
Pseudonym used for some recordings and performances by Russian electronic musician and vocalist Alina Astrova (? - ), based in the UK from the age of 17, who has also recorded as Inga Copeland and as part of the duo Hype Williams. Her sf project Unrecognisable (2024) takes several forms. Set in a future "where buildings are being used as weapons in a war between the government and the people", it tells the story of resistance members ...
Elliot, John
(1918-1997) UK author, primarily for television, who collaborated with Fred Hoyle on two serials, A for Andromeda and The Andromeda Breakthrough, and the subsequent novelizations under the same titles (1962 and 1964 respectively). He is not to be confused with the John Elliott (note different spelling) who wrote the anti-Chinese/Soviet political thriller ...
Willard, Tom
(? - ) US author of Military SF adventures: the Strike Fighters sequence, beginning with Strike Fighters (1990) and ending with Strike Fighters #7: Blood River (1991), which slides occasionally into Technothriller country; and the Afrikorps sequence as by Bill Dolan, beginning with Afrikorps (1991) and ending with Cobra Curse ...
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 ...