SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Wednesday 15 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: Andy Richards of Cold Tonnage Books
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 ...
Maddox, Michelle
Pseudonym of Canadian author Michelle Rouillard (1971- ) for her sf romance Countdown (2008), whose heroine must cope with psychic distress and what seems to be an imprisoning Pocket Universe from which to be rescued. Horror and fantasy novels under her own name are not listed below. [JC]
St Nicholas Magazine
US magazine for boys and girls, published by Scribner, later by Century Co, then by American Education Press. Founded by Rosewell Smith and edited by Mary Mapes Dodge 1873-1905, William Fayal Clarke 1905-1927, and others. Assistant editors included Frank R Stockton 1873-1881 and Tudor Jenks 1887-1902. It appeared monthly November 1873-May 1930 as St. Nicholas, then as St Nicholas Magazine from June ...
Invisible Adversaries
Austrian film (1977; original title Unsichtbare Gegner). Valie Export Filmproduktions GmbH. Directed by Valie Export. Written by Valie Export and Peter Weibel. Cast includes Peter Weibel and Susanne Widl. 104 minutes. Colour. / In contemporary Vienna, photographer Anna (Widl) receives messages on her radio saying that Aliens are taking over the minds of people, without altering their hosts' appearance, with the aim of ...
Amazing Mystery Funnies
US Comic (1938-1940). Twenty-four issues. Centaur Publishing. Artists and script writers (usually performing both tasks) include Harry Campbell, Bill Everett, Paul Gustavson, Malcolm Kildale, George Loomis and Basil Wolverton. Usually 7-9 strips and a two-page text story each issue, plus brief factual articles ("many serious defects may result from a child sucking his thumb"); the December 1939 issue includes a two-page review of Fanzines, ...
Robinson, Roger
(1943- ) UK computer programmer, bibliographer and publisher, active in UK Fandom for many years. The Writings of Henry Kenneth Bulmer (1983 chap; rev 1984 chap) is an exhaustive Bibliography of one of the most prolific sf writers, Kenneth Bulmer, and Who's Hugh?: An SF Reader's Guide to Pseudonyms (1987) is similarly exhaustive in its ...