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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 ...
Robb, J D
Pseudonym of US author Eleanor Marie Robertson (1950- ), better known from around 1980 under her working name Nora Roberts; under that signature – along with the Robb titles which are themselves bestsellers – she may be the most popular novelist in America, with sales of more than eight million copies a year, more than half a billion by 2025. Some of the approximately 225 books as by Nora Roberts are paranormal romances, and a few are ...
Boulle, Pierre
(1912-1994) French author who trained as an electrical engineer and spent eight years in Malaysia as a planter and soldier. His experience of the Orient permeated much of his early work, which was generally not sf; Le pont sur la rivière Kwaï (1952; trans Xan Fielding as The Bridge on the River Kwai 1954) remains his best-known novel. Boulle uses moral fable to pinpoint human absurdities, and his relatively large body of work in the sf genre is a good ...
Gask, Arthur
(1869-1951) UK-born dental surgeon and author who began his latter career in the early 1921, after his 1920 move to Australia. Among his many detective thrillers are two tales of some sf interest, The Red Paste Murders (1924; vt Murder in the Night 1932), the eponymous chemical being of borderline-sf composition, and The Fall of a Dictator (1939), which ventures into the Near Future. [JC]
Weiner, Ellis
(1950- ) US author, humorist and editor, a former member of the National Lampoon editorial team. His first book-length work was The Great Muppet Caper! The Making of the Masterpiece (1981), a spoof behind-the-scenes production account of The Great Muppet Caper (1981), the second Muppets film. Of direct sf interest is National Lampoon's Doon (1984), a very broad Parody of Frank ...
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 ...