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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 ...
Hunter, Thomas O'D
(? - ) US author of a Post-Holocaust tale, Softly Walks the Beast (1982), in which survivors must cope with events typical of Horror in SF. [JC]
Palm Springs
Film (2020). Limelight Productions in association with The Lonely Island, Sun Entertainment. Directed by Max Barbakow. Written by Andy Siara. Cast includes Cristin Milioti, Andy Samberg and J K Simmons. 90 minutes. Colour. / In Palm Springs, California, Sarah (Milioti) attends her sister's wedding. Her flirtation with a sardonic, Hawaiian-shirted guest named Nyles (Samberg) is disrupted when a masked assailant (Simmons) shoots Nyles with a bow. In the ...
Mandel, George
(1920-2021) US Comics artist who drew some Superhero figures including The Woman in Red – first seen in Thrilling Comics #2 (March 1940) and identified as the first female masked crime-fighter – Black Marvel for Timely and Blue Bolt for Novelty, until he was badly wounded in World War Two. / Mandel then turned to writing, beginning with the early ...
Crest of the Stars
Japanese animated tv series (original title Seikai no Monshō). Produced by Sunrise; directed by Yasuchika Nagaoka; based on the Seikai ["Star World"] novels of Hiroyuki Morioka. Crest of the Stars (1999, 13 episodes) adapts Morioka's Crest (1996) trilogy. It was followed by Banner of the Stars I (2000, 13 episodes), Banner II (2001, 10 episodes), and ...
Clute, John
(1940- ) Canadian critic, editor and author, in the UK from 1969; married to Judith Clute from 1964, partner of Elizabeth Hand since 1996. He began to publish work of genre interest with an sf-tinged poem "Carcajou Lament" in Triquarterly for Winter 1960 [ie Autumn 1959]; he began consistently publishing sf reviews in his "New Fiction" column for the Toronto Star (1966-1967), and later in ...