SF Encyclopedia Home Page
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
Sponsor of the day: The League of Fan Funds
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 ...
Wonderama
Letter-size saddle-stapled Cinema magazine printed in middle-grade paper. Publisher: Pure Imagination. Editor: Forrest J Ackerman. One undated issue published 1993. / Yet another attempt by Ackerman to return to Media Magazine publishing after the conclusion of the original run of Famous Monsters of Filmland in the 1980s. Featured material ...
Bond, Nelson S
(1908-2006) US author and in later years philatelist (he published works in that field) and rare book dealer. He began his career in public relations, coming to sf in April 1937 with "Down the Dimensions" for Astounding. He wrote only two stories under pseudonyms, one as George Danzell in 1940 and one as Hubert Mavity in 1939, although two of his sports stories were reprinted under the House Name Wilton ...
Psychohistory
A much-loved item of sf Terminology, coined in Isaac Asimov's very popular sequence Foundation (May 1942-January 1950 Astounding; fixups 1951-1953); it should not be confused with the identical term sometimes used by historians, which refers to the study of the relation of psychological motives to historical process. The attractive but purely ...
Platt, Marc
(1953- ) UK author associated mainly with the Doctor Who universe, for which he has written Ties in various media; books of interest begin with Doctor Who – Ghost Light (1990) and conclude with Doctor Who: The New Adventures: Lungbarrow (1997). [JC]
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 ...