SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Saturday 18 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: David Cowhig
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 ...
Sci Fiction
US Online Magazine or, perhaps more accurately, the fiction section of the Sci Fi Channel (see Television) website SciFi.com and not a separate magazine in its own right. Sci Fiction was edited by Ellen Datlow and featured a new story each week, plus sometimes an additional reprint story. It ran from 19 May 2000 to 28 December 2005. / Datlow's track record as fiction editor at ...
Kamishibai
["Paper Theatre"] Although there has been a scroll-based story-telling tradition in Japan since the 12th century, for our purposes the kamishibai medium was a spin-off that flourished between the 1920s and the 1950s, spanning the Depression era, the peak of Japanese Imperialism, and the American postwar Occupation. / A kamishibai was a frame mounted on the back of a bicycle, coincidentally equivalent in dimensions to a ...
Burkett, Larry
(1939-2003) US radio host and author, mostly of nonfiction, including several popular texts on how to succeed in business from a Christian perspective. He is of sf interest for the Illuminati sequence beginning with The Illuminati (1991), set in a Near Future America taken over by the eponymous pagan Secret Masters, with only a few Christians (see Religion) prepared to resist. In ...
Falling Skies
US tv series (2011-2015). Dreamworks Television 2011-2013, Amblin Television 2014-2015. Created by Robert Rodat. Producers include Greg Beeman, Rodat, Steven Spielberg, and Graham Yost. Directors include Beeman, Sergio Mimica-Gezzan and Fred Toye. Writers include Rodat, Melinda Hsu Taylor and Yost. Cast includes Noah Wyle as Tom Mason, Will Patton as Captain Weaver, Moon Bloodgood as Dr Anne Glass, Peter Shinkoda as Dai, Mpho Koaho as Anthony, ...
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 ...