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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 ...
Lanchester, John
(1962- ) German-born journalist and author, in UK from 1972, most of whose fiction has been nonfantastic, though his first novel, The Debt to Pleasure (1996), comes close to regions of Fantastika as its gourmet protagonist travels through a surreal France, arriving at what he claims to be his home, which he immediately weaponizes. Capital (2012) is a nonfantastic anatomy of London and ...
Alan Parsons Project, The
UK prog-rock band founded by Alan Parsons (1948- ) and Eric Woolfson (1945-2009). Parsons worked as a record producer, and remains best-known today as the sound engineer of Pink Floyd's album Dark Side of the Moon (1974); there is, indeed, an inescapably sub-Floyd feel to most of the work released by his own band. Each of the ten Alan Parsons Project albums develops a single "concept", often science-fictional, through a number ...
Rosny aîné, J-H
Principal pseudonym of French-speaking Belgian author Joseph-Henri-HonoréBoëx (1856-1940), in the UK 1875-1884, subsequently in France. He initially signed this name simply J-H Rosny, without an indication of seniority ("aîné" meaning "elder"), and shared this form of the pseudonym with his younger brother Justin; some works published as by J-H Rosny during that period, none of them sf, are collaborative. After 1907, when the brothers separated, the name was divided, ...
Lovegrove, James
(1965- ) UK author who also writes as Jay Amory (note play on his name) and has set crosswords for UK newspapers as Jael; his first novel, The Hope (1990) – set on a vast ocean liner as evocative of the topos of the Ship of Fools as it is of the Generation Starship or the Pocket Universe – is vigorously ...
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 ...