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Friday 17 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.
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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 ...
Nesvadba, Josef
(1926-2005) Czech psychiatrist, doctor and author, who began his literary career with dramatic sketches but soon turned to detective stories and satirical sf, continuing the tradition of Karel Čapek. One of the best Czech sf writers (see Czech and Slovak SF) – though he wrote less after the late 1960s – and aside from Čapek the best known in the West, Nesvadba created ...
Leininger, Robert
(1946- ) US author in whose Black Sun (1991) the Disaster of a sudden dimming of the Sun causes a new Ice Age (see Climate Change). [JC]
Castle of Frankenstein
US letter-size saddle-stapled Media Magazine printed on newsprint. Published by Gothic Castle Publishing Company Incorporated. Editors included Calvin T Beck, Larry Ivie and Bhob Stewart. 25 issues 1962 to 1975 plus one Annual edition. Publication, though nominally quarterly, was very erratic. / This is widely considered the best of the US Monster Movies magazines, eclipsing ...
Churchill, Winston S
(1874-1965) UK politician and author, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953; influential advocate of legalized Eugenics programmes, such as he (with others) expounded in the Mental Deficiency Act of 1912, with "deficiency" being defined in both medical and moral terms. His only novel, Savrola: A Tale of the Revolution in Laurania (May-December 1899 Macmillan's Magazine; 1900), is a ...
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 ...