SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Tuesday 14 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
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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 ...
Yacht
Also known as YΔCHT. American electropop band, founded by Jona Bechtolt (1980- ). The group is more fully integrated into digital culture than many – initially created for an "art and technology platform" entitled "Crap-tops versus Laptops" organized by New York's Museum of Modern Art, Yacht add Powerpoint presentations, software piracy and integrated blogging and vlogging to the usual recording-and-touring business of being in a band. Their fourth album, ...
Kid Cosmic
US animated online tv series (2020-2022). Netflix Animation. Created by Craig McCracken. Directors include Craig McCracken, Justin Nichols, Rob Renzetti and Dave Thomas. Writers include Lauren Faust, Craig McCracken and Rob Renzetti. Voice cast includes Keith Ferguson, Jack Fisher, Tom Kenny, Amanda C Miller, Bobby Moynihan, Lily Rose Silver, Cree Summer, Fred Tatasciore and Kim Yarbrough. 24 16-23 minute episodes (and five shorts). Colour. / When ...
Looker
Film (1981). Ladd Co/Warner Bros. Directed by Michael Crichton. Written by Crichton. Cast includes James Coburn, Susan Dey, Albert Finney and Leigh Taylor-Young. 94 minutes cut to 90 minutes. Colour. / Looker was intended by Crichton as a comedy, but the studio wanted a suspense thriller, and the result falls confusingly between the two. Three models, after having undergone surgery to make them even more beautiful, are murdered, and the ...
SETI
Term coined outside the sf genre, standing for Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence – carried out by passive observation, typically using radio telescopes in hope of detecting Alien transmissions or Communications. A notable real-world effort was the 1960 observational Project Ozma founded by Frank Drake (1930-2022), sited at the US National Radio Astronomy Observatory (Green Bank, West Virginia) and discussed by Martin ...
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 ...