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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 ...
Davidson, Michael
Pseudonym of Michael Zeik (? - ), US author of two sf novels: The Karma Machine (1975), a dystopian vision of a Computer-dominated world; and Daughter of Is: A Science Fiction Epic: An "Else-when" Parable (1978), an Alternate-History tale. Davidson should not be confused with the poet Michael Davidson (1944- ). [JC]
Del Rey Books
US paperback imprint, founded 1977, a subsidiary of Ballantine Books, itself a part of Random House. The imprint was named by then-Ballantine editor Judy-Lynn del Rey for her husband Lester del Rey; the original Ballantine imprint is now little used for sf. Judy-Lynn, who died in 1986, was editor-in-chief and, from 1982, publisher; Lester, the very successful fantasy editor, retired ...
Westlake, Michael
(1942- ) UK author and editor, much of whose work has been in film studies. One Zero and the Night Controller (1980) is a Fabulation in which a taxi driver tracks down an occult nocturnal mystery; Imaginary Women (1987) plays with questions of Perception as conveyed through the hallucinations of film; and in 51 Soko: To the Islands on the Other Side of the World (1990) ...
Dobrée, Bonamy
(1891-1974) UK academic and author, in active service during World War One. He is of sf interest for Timotheus: The Future of the Theatre (1925 chap), a contribution to its publisher's To-day and To-morrow series shaped as an excerpt from a Future History told presumably to Dobrée by its unnamed narrator, who had duplicated H G ...
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 ...