SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Wednesday 15 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
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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 ...
Rendal, Justine
(1948-2004) US author born Randy Goldfield who changed her name legally to Justine Olivia Rendal; in her Young Adult sf tale, A Very Personal Computer (2004), an adolescent in crisis is helped by his Computer, which contains a seemingly sentient program or AI called Conner, which guides him through his difficult times. [JC]
Parkinson, Keith
(1958-2005) American artist. He received artistic training at the University of Michigan and the Kendall School of Design before beginning his career in advertising. Along with Clyde Caldwell, Jeff Easley, and Larry D Elmore, Parkinson then went to work for TSR and, during the next five years, produced numerous illustrations for the company's books, magazines, calendars, and Games. While such assignments naturally involved a focus on ...
Mafi, Tahereh
(1988- ) US author whose Shatter Me sequence of Young Adult Near Future Dystopian tales, beginning with Shatter Me (2011), combines coming-of-age romance with a not unfamiliar depiction of an America gone savagely wrong. The young protagonist, cursed/blessed with a Psi Power through which she is capable of painfully draining ...
Langan, Sarah
(1974- ) US author who focused on horror in her earlier career, for which she has won several awards, beginning to publish work of genre interest with "Heat" in EOTU Ezine for December 2000. Her first novel, The Keeper (2006), begins the Keeper sequence of horror tales [not listed below]. Her first work of strong sf interest is the Near Future Good Neighbors (2021), a ...
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 ...