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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 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 ...
Deep Impact
Film (1998). DreamWorks Pictures and Paramount Pictures present a Zanuck/Brown production. Directed by Mimi Leder. Written by Bruce Joel Rubin and Michael Tolkin. Cast includes Robert Duvall, Morgan Freeman, Téa Leoni and Elijah Wood. 121 minutes. Colour. / In this old-fashioned Disaster movie, humanity's future is threatened by a large Comet on a course to collide with the Earth. ...
Moscoe, Mike
(1947- ) US author who began publishing work of genre interest with "Summer Hopes – Winter Dreams" in Analog for March 1991, but who has since concentrated mainly on series, sometimes as by Mike Shepherd, beginning with the Lost Millennium sequence comprising First Dawn (1996) Second Fire (1997) and Lost Days (1998), whose protagonists arrive via Time Travel ...
Sears, Richard
(? - ) US journalist, counsellor and author of First Born (2000), in which an Alien entity, possibly descended to America by flying saucer (see UFOs), seems to have been implanting its seed in human women; hunted by Neo Tech arm of the government, for its own purposes. The unusual child itself survives, and may take us in hand. Last Day (2001), though its storyline is not ...
Probe [tv]
US tv series (1988). MCA Television for ABC-TV. Created by Isaac Asimov and William Link. Executive Producer: Michael I Wagner. Directors included Rob Bowman, Robert Iscove, Vincent McEveety and Virgil W Vogel. Writers included Asimov, Wagner, James L Novack and Michael Piller. Cast includes Ashley Crow, Jon Cypher, Clive Revill and Parker Stevenson. Two-hour pilot film plus six 45-minute episodes. Colour. / Reclusive, socially awkward scientific ...
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 ...