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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
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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 ...
Attack Vector: Tactical
Cardboard models-based Wargame (2004). Ad Astra Games. Designed by Ken Burnside, Eric Finley, Tony Valle. / Attack Vector is a rare example of a game which, like Battlefleet Mars (1977) and Independence War: The Starship Simulator (1997), approaches space combat in a physically realistic way. Newtonian mechanics and accurate analyses of ...
Borders, Joe H
(1858-1930) US newspaper owner from Eastern Kentucky and author of The Queen of Appalachia (1901), a Lost Race novel set unusually in the eastern USA, where a civilization made up of descendants of early American pioneers has established an arcadian, monarchical Utopia supported by advanced Technology. [JC]
Sentinel, The
Videogame (1986; vt The Sentry in the US). Designed by Geoff Crammond. Platforms: C64 (1986); Amstrad, AtariST, BBCMicro, Spectrum (1987); Amiga (1988), DOS (1989). / In The Sentinel, topography is everything. The player adopts the role of a "synthoid", a Robot in a three-dimensional chequerboard landscape overlooked by its eponymous guardian. The Sentinel's gaze slowly scans across ...
Dunn, J R
(1953- ) US author who began publishing sf with "Long Knives" for L Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future (anth 1987) edited by A J Budrys; a later story, "Crux Gammata" (October 1992 Asimov's) is an interesting Hitler Wins tale. This Side of Judgment (1994), Dunn's first novel, posits a Cyberpunk-coloured future ...
Clute, John
(1940- ) Canadian critic, editor and author, in the UK from 1969; married to Judith Clute from 1964, partner of Elizabeth Hand since 1996. He began to publish work of genre interest with an sf-tinged poem "Carcajou Lament" in Triquarterly for Winter 1960 [ie Autumn 1959]; he began consistently publishing sf reviews in his "New Fiction" column for the Toronto Star (1966-1967), and later in ...