SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Thursday 16 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
Sponsor of the day: The Telluride Institute
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 ...
Palumbo, Donald E
(1949- ) US academic and author, married to the artist Julie Bell in the 1980s, father of the artist David Palumbo; he began to publish sf studies of interest with "Loving That Machine; Or, the Mechanical Egg: Sexual Mechanisms and Metaphors in Science Fiction Films" in The Mechanical God: Machines in Science Fiction (anth 1982) edited by Thomas P Dunn and Richard D Ehrlich. Following from ...
Smith, Greg Leitich
(? - ) US author of books for children and the Young Adult market, beginning with the nonfantastic Ninjas, Piranhas, and Galileo (2003). Of sf interest are Chronal Engine (2012), which features a Time Machine in the protagonists' grandfather's basement, through which abductions have occurred, leading young Max, Emma and Kyle into ...
Social Darwinism
Social Darwinism is the thesis that social evolution and social history are governed by the same principles that govern the Evolution of species in Nature, so that conflict between and within cultures constitutes a struggle for existence which is the motor of progress. Such ideas are inherent in the socio-economic theories of Herbert Spencer (1820-1903), who actually coined the phrase "the survival of the fittest", borrowed by Charles Darwin (1809-1882). Darwin ...
Obukhova, Lydia
(1924-1991) Russian author who began publishing work of interest as early as 1945, and whose books gained some popularity in her native land. Lilit (1966; trans Mirra Ginsburg as Daughter of Night: A Tale of Three Worlds 1974) tells the story of Adam's first wife, Lilith (see Adam and Eve), who meets an Alien assessing Earth for colonization. He falls in love with her, ...
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 ...