SF Encyclopedia Home Page
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
Sponsor of the day: Andy Richards of Cold Tonnage Books
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 ...
Levy, David
(1913-2000) US film executive and author in whose The Gods of Foxcroft (1970) the protagonist awakes from Suspended Animation to find the world of 500 years hence suffering under circumstances disastrous to the world's Ecology, forcing humans into cramped habitats; meanwhile, Aliens are observing us from space. [JC]
McCaughrean, Geraldine
(1951- ) UK editor and author, usually for children and for Young Adult readers, though occasionally for a wider readership; most of her work has been fantasy, beginning with A Little Lower Than the Angels (1987), where a young stonemason is seconded by God to serve as an apprentice angel. In A Pack of Lies: Twelve Stories in One (coll of linked stories 1988), a ...
Manuel, Fritzie P
(1914-2012) US academic married to her collaborator Frank E Manuel from 1931 until his death. Her work of relevance to this encyclopedia is essentially collaborative: Utopian Thought in the Western World (1979) with Frank E Manuel, an enormous text whose grace and cogency bespeak a close alliance between the two [for details see his entry]. [JC] /
Vaughan, Herbert M
(1870-1948) Welsh local historian, bibliographer and author, administratively involved in World War One though not in active service. He is of sf interest primarily for two novels. Meleager: A Fantasy (1916) is set on a miniature version of Earth and the Solar System (see Great and Small), where a Eugenic Dystopia ...
Nicholls, Peter
(1939-2018) Australian editor and author, primarily a critic and historian of sf through his creation and editing of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction [see below]; resident in the UK 1970-1988, in Australia from 1988; worked as an academic in English literature (1962-1968, 1971-1977), scripted television documentaries, was a Harkness Fellow in Film-making (1968-1970) in the USA, worked as a publisher's editor (1982-1983), often broadcast film and book reviews on BBC Radio from 1974 and ...