SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Friday 17 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 ...
Sunshine
Film (2007). Fox Searchlight Pictures presents a DNA Films production in association with the UK Film Council. Directed by Danny Boyle. Written by Alex Garland. Cast includes Rose Byrne, Cliff Curtis, Chris Evans, Troy Garity, Cillian Murphy, Hiroyuki Sanada, Mark Strong, Benedict Wong and Michelle Yeoh. 107 minutes. Colour. / Theoretical physicist Robert Capa (Murphy) is part of a last-ditch eight-person rescue effort to save Earth from solar winter ...
Shepherd, Joel
(1974- ) Australian author; it is an unconfirmed speculation that he has also written as by Joel Dane, an author of Military SF not dissimilar to work signed Shepherd, and also as by Joel Naftali and Joel Ross, all three being associated in part through the identical given name; Shepherd's work has been primarily restricted to three series. The Cassandra Kresnov sequence, comprising Crossover ...
Monette, Paul
(1945-1995) US poet and author, winner of the National Book Award for his memoir Becoming a Man: Half a Life Story (1992), though an earlier nonfiction text, Borrowed Time: An AIDS Memoir (1988) has remained more prominent. He is best remembered as an effective and eloquent delineator of gay life in America, and as an activist for gay rights, mostly in the context of AIDS. He is of modest sf interest for some Ties, beginning with ...
de Pedrolo, Manuel
(1918-1990) Catalan author of an immensely varied series of works in all genres (poetry, journalism, drama, short fiction and the novel); his full range of accomplishments has not yet been fully acknowledged. Despite his staunch resistance against the repressive policies of Franco's regime (1939-1975) – he was a Republican soldier during the Civil War (1936-1939) – Pedrolo mistrusted the Catalan literary establishment of the democratic era, choosing to ...
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 ...