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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 ...
Sh'mantra
Australian neo-prog band. Both their debut release Cornucopia (1998) and their follow-up double-album Formula Orange (2001) are couched in an atmospheric, pared-down musical style, mostly instrumental, a little reminiscent of Radiohead. Tracks on the latter include "Robots on the Beach" and a ten-minute version of Edgar Allan Poe called "Pit and the Pendulum". It works ...
Yelverton, Christopher
Pseudonym of unidentified UK author (? -? ), who may or may not be related to the historical English political figures, Sir Christopher Yelverton (1536-1612) and his grandson, Sir Christopher Yelverton, 1st Baronet (? -1654). The dreaming protagonist of Oneiros; Or, Some Questions of the Day (1889) finds himself translated a millennium hence to another planet (see Life on Other Worlds), ...
Black Scorpion
US tv series. (2001). Chum Television for the Sci Fi Channel. Created by Roger Corman and Craig J Nevius. Directors included Tim Andrew, David Blass, Gwyneth Gibby and Rob Spera. Writers included Steve Gentile, Nick Guthe and Malcolm Stephens. Cast includes BT (Brandon Terrell), Michelle Lintel and Scott Valentine. 22 60-minute episodes. Colour. / Police detective Darcy Walker (Lintel) works in Angel City, a thinly ...
Smith, George O
(1911-1981) US electronics engineer and author, most active and prominent in the 1940s in Astounding Science-Fiction, in which his first story, "QRM – Interplanetary", appeared in October 1942: the tale both began his sf career and initiated his most famous endeavour, the Venus Equilateral Series of stories (all in Astounding except for one late addition) about a ...
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 ...