SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Tuesday 21 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 ...
Tucker, James B
(1922- ) UK teacher and author of Not an Earthly Chance (1970), a Space Opera for Robert Hale Limited in which Aliens from the Moon plan to take over our world. [JC/DRL]
Chipman, C P
(1878-1956) US author of stories for the Boys' Papers; his two sf tales of interest are An Aerial Runaway: The Balloon Adventures of Rod & Tod in North & South America (1901) with W P Chipman, who was his father [see his entry for details]; and The Last Cruise of the Electra: Being the Strange Adventures of Two American Lads on Land and Sea (1902) solo. [JC]
Penney, Lloyd
(1959- ) Canadian fan, editor and convention-runner, active in Fandom since the late 1970s; he co-edited the Fanzine Torus (8 issues 1986-1990) and has received multiple FAAn Awards for his many letters published in fanzines. Since November 2022 he has been the editor of the current incarnation of Amazing Stories, and in this ...
Barnes, John
(1957- ) US author, married to fantasy author Kara Dalkey (1953- ) from 1993 to 2001, who began publishing sf with "Manuel's Tears", for CoEvolution Quarterly in 1982, a tale which comprised a middle chapter of his successful first novel, The Man Who Pulled Down the Sky (1987), an effective drama involving highly coloured political conflicts throughout the solar system after World War Three ...
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 ...