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 ...
Gom, Leona
(1946- ) Canadian poet and author, recently of a series of detections for the Young Adult market; The Y Chromosome (1990), set in a world almost exclusively inhabited by women, hovers fruitfully between Utopia and Dystopia in its depiction of the few remaining males, who survive in hiding. [JC]
Captain Flight Comics
US Comic (1944-1947). 11 issues. Four-Star Publications Inc. Artists include George Appel, L B Cole, Leo Morey, Zoltan Szenics and Maurice Whitman. 52-60 pages: usually 4-6 long strips, a 2 page text story or non-fiction pieces and, from #3, a few short humorous strips. / Pilot Captain Flight has various war-related adventures, sometimes two an issue. Normally there are no fantastic elements, but in #2 he invents the "Pilotless ...
Avon Fantasy Reader
US Digest-size magazine published by Avon Books, edited by Donald A Wollheim, who considered it an anthology series [see his entry, therefore, for list of titles] although it resembled a magazine, as did a number of Avon's other publications at the time when the Pulps, pocketbooks and digests were all vying for position on the newsstands. Magazine bibliographers consider it a magazine; book ...
St Nicholas Magazine
US magazine for boys and girls, published by Scribner, later by Century Co, then by American Education Press. Founded by Rosewell Smith and edited by Mary Mapes Dodge 1873-1905, William Fayal Clarke 1905-1927, and others. Assistant editors included Frank R Stockton 1873-1881 and Tudor Jenks 1887-1902. It appeared monthly November 1873-May 1930 as St. Nicholas, then as St Nicholas Magazine from June ...
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 ...