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Wednesday 22 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 ...
It's Alive
Film (1974). Larco/Warner Bros. Produced and directed by Larry Cohen. Written by Cohen. Cast includes Andrew Duggan, Sharon Farrell, John Ryan and Guy Stockwell. 91 minutes. Colour. / A Mutant baby (the mother has taken a new Drug) kills all the medical staff in the delivery room and leaps through a skylight to go on a rampage, killing a woman, a milkman and several policemen. Although the plot ...
Bell, Harry
(1947- ) UK civil servant (retired 1997) and artist, active in Fandom since 1965 though with occasional periods of silence. He has contributed cartoon artwork to many Fanzines including Ansible, Checkpoint, Maya, Robert Lichtman's Trap Door and Leroy Kettle's ...
Odom, Mel
(1957- ) US author of many novels since 1988, many of them being Ties like his contributions to the Mack Bolan thriller series as by Don Pendleton, after that author had franchised himself as a House Name; he has also written several series, usually fantasy, including numerous contributions to the Buffy, the Vampire Slayer universe [associational or fantasy ties and ...
Zahler, S Craig
(1973- ) US screenwriter, singer-songwriter and author whose first novels were Westerns, beginning with A Congregation of Jackals (2010); his third, the Near Future Corpus Chrome, Inc (2014), is set in and around the world's plunge through the Singularity interface; in the churn of this world, the private corporation of the title owns copyright on a ...
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 ...