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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.
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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 ...
Aymé, Marcel
(1902-1967) French author and dramatist, not generally thought of as a contributor to the sf field, though several of his best-known novels, such as La jument verte (1933; appalling anonymous trans as The Green Mare 1938; new trans Norman Denny 1955), are fantasies, usually with a satirical point to make about provincial French life. La belle image (1941; trans Norman Denny as The Second Face 1951; new trans Sophie Lewis ...
NFG
Canadian Semiprozine published by NFG Media, Toronto, and edited by Shar O'Brien. It saw six issues, A4 format, January 2003 (copyright date given as 2002) to May 2005 but fell victim to computer problems which precipitated its demise. It published "writing with attitude", strong stories with powerful plots and imagery. Writers included Chris Dolley with his debut story "The Sleeper and the Flame" (January 2003), Kaolin Fire, ...
O'Keefe, Claudia
(1958- ) US author, the hero of whose first sf novel, Black Snow Days (1990), has been Genetically Engineered by his mother to reawaken, ten years after his fatal car crash, into a Post-Holocaust environment he is intended to redeem; the novel rather confusedly puts him through a long quest sequence for a McGuffin Hidden Base which contains the answers to ...
Macowan, Norman
(1877-1961) UK actor and playwright, whose Near Future play, Glorious Morning: A Play in Three Acts (1938 chap), is set in the Graustarkian (see George Barr McCutcheon; Ruritania) state of Zagnira, where a Joan of Arc figure foments revolution. [JC]
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 ...