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Wednesday 22 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 ...
Craig, William
(1929-1997) US historian and author in whose marginally Near Future Technothriller, The Tashkent Crisis (1971), the USSR threatens America and the world with an ultimatum and a new energy-beam Weapon or giant Ray Gun; American agents fight back, destroying the threat with a miniaturized nuclear warhead improbably concealed within a pistol. [JC/DRL]
Winterburn, Katherine
(? - ) US author of Mystery=Wisdom From Mars (1961), a Utopia set on Mars and based on Eugenic principles. The fittest rule. Children seem to be raised communally. [JC]
Land of the Giants
US tv series (1968-1970). An Irwin Allen Production for Twentieth Century Fox TV/ABC. Created by Irwin Allen, also executive producer. Writers included Bob and Esther Mitchell, Bob and Wanda Duncan, Richard Shapiro, Dan Ullman, William Welch. Directors included Harry Harris, Nathan Juran, Sobey Martin, Irwin Allen (1st episode only). Regular cast Gary Conway, Kurt Kasznar, Don Marshall, Heather Young, Don Matheson, Deanna Lund, Stefan Arngrim. Special ...
Yeats, William Butler
(1865-1939) Irish playwright and poet, active from 1885, one of the two or three most significant twentieth century poets to write in English, winner of the Nobel Prize in 1923. Unlike his close contemporary Wyndham Lewis, he was relatively immune to the kind of early twentieth century modernism sympathetic to pre-World War One Futurist epiphanies of the Machine (see ...
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 ...