SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Tuesday 21 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 20 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 ...
Houston, David
Pseudonym of US author Houston Force Lumpkin III (1938- ), who produced sf books with some intensity for a few years, though he fell silent after 1982. Generally unremarkable, though competent, his works began with Alien Perspective (1978) and the Gods in a Vortex sf-adventure sequence comprising Gods in a Vortex (1979) and Wingmaster (1981). He then wrote a series of novels Tied to the ...
Comics
This entry covers the comic strip in daily and Sunday newspapers, European comic papers and the initially US-style comic book; it does not cover the Graphic Novel per se, although clearly there is a more than casual overlap between the two categories. / Comics stories use some interaction of text and picture, as opposed to the "storybook" or "picture book" use of words plus illustrations. Design, drawing style, caption and word-balloon continuity ...
Isle, Sue
Legal name until 2014 of Australian author Alex Isle (1963- ), who changed their gender identity in that year; work before 2014 is signed Sue Isle. They began to publish work of genre interest with "Nightwings" in Aurealis for April 1990. Most of their subsequent work, much of it sf, has been Young Adult, though Scale of Dragon, Tooth of Wolf (1996) is a coming-of-age fantasy, with ...
Nuclear Energy
The claim that sf is a realistic, extrapolative literature is often supported by the citing of successful Predictions, among which atomic power and the atom bomb are usually given pride of place. When the news of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was released in 1945, John W Campbell Jr, editor of Astounding Science-Fiction, was exultant, claiming that now sf would have to be taken seriously. ...
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 ...