SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Monday 20 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
Sponsor of the day: Paul Giamatti
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 ...
Cheney, Matthew
(1976- ) US editor and author, who has been involved in the republication of works by Samuel R Delany, including The Jewel-Hinged Jaw: Notes on the Language of Science Fiction (1978; rev 2009), which he introduced. He began publishing works of genre interest with "Fragments" in Rabid Transit: Menagerie (anth 2005) edited by the "Ratbastards". A first substantial selection of his work has been assembled ...
Korn, Gabrielle
(1989- ) US editor, journalist and author who is of sf interest for the Yours for the Taking sequence comprising two chronologically interwoven titles, Yours for the Taking (2023) and The Shutouts (2024). The first tale begins in 2041, as global warming (see Climate Change) and hints of some even more devastating Pandemic, radically destabilize the world; the second tale is ...
They Live
Film (1988). Alive Films. Directed by John Carpenter. Written by Frank Armitage (pseudonym of Carpenter), based on "Eight O'Clock in the Morning" (November 1963 F&SF) by Ray Nelson. Cast includes Keith David, Meg Foster and Roddy Piper. 94 minutes. Colour. / After several not very successful films for major studios (Starman [1984], Christine ...
Tuck, Donald H
(1922-2010) Australian bibliographer and industrial manager whose bibliographical labours in sf since the late 1940s were among the most extensive in the field since the pioneering work of Everett F Bleiler. In recent decades his publications have been partially superseded, but they comprise one of the foundation Bibliographies upon which later workers have built; the increasing sophistication and breadth of coverage of ...
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 ...