SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Monday 20 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
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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 ...
Longstreth, T Morris
(1886-1975) US author active from 1915 or earlier; of sf interest is a late juvenile (see Children's SF) tale, Time Flight (1954), in which two contemporary young men are Timeslipped into seventeenth-century Salem at the time of the witch trials, and find themselves in danger. [JC]
Rimel, Duane W
(1915-1996) US poet and author of some short fiction, some of it with H P Lovecraft; his sf novel, Time Swap (1969) as by Rex Weldon, combines Time Travel and Sex. [JC]
Schwehn, Kaethe
(circa 1979- ) US academic, memoirist and author whose first novel, The Rending and the Nest (2018) is of sf interest for its depiction of a vast Disaster, the disappearance of 95% of the human race, though typically of the Mainstream Writer of SF this "inexplicable" vanishment is more metaphorical than actual. The survivors of this disaster, or some of them, occupy a remote ...
Pearce, Philippa
(1920-2006) UK author, almost exclusively of fantasy tales for children, though her first novel Minnow on the Say (1955; vt The Minnow Leads to Treasure 1958) as A Philippa Pearce is a nonfantastic treasure-hunt story of some charm. Her most famous novel, Tom's Midnight Garden (1958) as A Philippa Pearce, for which she won the Carnegie Medal, makes use of the time theories of J W Dunne to ...
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 ...