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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 ...
Jennison, John W
(1911-1980) UK author, one of several who became active as mass-producers of genre fiction for UK paperback houses and who remained reticent about personal details during their careers. From about 1945 to the year in which it is thought he may have died, Jennison seems to have written over 100 novels under at least forty pseudonyms, mostly thrillers and Westerns; he began to publish routine but occasionally engaging sf with two novels as Edgar Rees Kennedy, ...
Wilson, Daniel H
(1978- ) US engineer and author, with a PhD in robotics, a competence and interest reflected from the beginning of his writing career with the publication of the nonfiction How to Survive a Robot Uprising (2005), a slightly jocose treatment of the "threat" to society of the Robot for a Young Adult audience. Some of his fiction as well, like A Boy and His Bot (2011; vt ...
Timeline
Film (2003). Paramount Pictures presents a Mutual Film Company and Cobalt Media Group production. Directed by Richard Donner. Written by Jeff Maguire and George Nolfi, based on the novel Timeline (1999) by Michael Crichton. Cast includes Gerard Butler, Billy Connolly, Matt Craven, Marton Csokas, Ethan Embry, Anna Friel, Frances O'Connor, Michael Sheen, David Thewlis, Paul Walker and Lambert Wilson. ...
Rorvik, David
(1944- ) US journalist who took his degree in journalism at the University of Montana and specialized in scientific and medical issues. His pseudo-nonfiction book In His Image: The Cloning of a Man (1978) claimed that the author had been involved in the 1973 creation of a Clone of a specific human being described as a wealthy businessman called Max. This caused both sensation and controversy, and led to a lawsuit filed against the ...
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 ...