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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 ...
Dexter, William
Pseudonym of UK author William Thomas Pritchard (1906-1985), whose two sf novels make up the short Denis Grafton series, in which concerns about the End of the World through nuclear World War Three are articulated, fairly incoherently, via a metaphysical Space Opera plot. In World of Eclipse (1954), after life on Earth has been eliminated by a "thorium" bomb, a few ...
Baldwin, Bill
Working name of US author Merl William Baldwin Jr (1935-2015), known mainly for the efficient Helmsman adventure-sf Space Opera sequence, whose plots are deployed on a galactic scale, initially beginning with The Helmsman (1985; rev vt The Helmsman: A Special Director's Cut 2004) and closing with The Defiance (1996); a late addition to the series is The Turning Tide (2011). Proof copies of ...
Miesel, Sandra
(1941- ) US critic and author, with degrees in chemistry and medieval history. Her involvement in sf was initially as a fan; from 1967 on she published at least seventy-five pieces in Fanzines. As a critic she became active in the 1970s, her first book being Myth, Symbol, and Religion in The Lord of the Rings (1973 chap) on J R R Tolkien. Her next book, ...
Near Future
Images of the near future in sf differ markedly from those of the Far Future in both content and attitude. The far future tends to be associated with notions of ultimate destiny, and is dominated by metaphors of senescence; its images display a world irrevocably transfigured. It is viewed from a detached viewpoint; the dominant mood is – paradoxically – one of nostalgia, because the far future, like the dead past, can be entered only imaginatively, and ...
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 ...