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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.
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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 ...
Fractale
Japanese animated tv series (2011). A-1 Pictures, Ordet. Written by Mari Okada. Directed by Yutaka Yamamoto. Voice cast includes Shintaro Asanuma, Kana Hanazawa, Yuka Iguchi, Yū Kobayashi and Minami Tsuda. Eleven 23-minute episodes. Colour. / In twenty-second-century Ireland, fourteen-year-old Clain (Kobayashi) lives in an isolated cottage; his social interactions are usually with "doppels" or Avatars, such as his parents'. ...
Dye, Charles
(1925-1960) US author who served in the US Air Force during World War Two and began publishing sf with "The Last Orbit" in Amazing for February 1950. He was active for less than half a decade, soon publishing his only sf novel, Prisoner in the Skull (1952), in which ordinary Homo sapiens and a form of Superman engage in thriller-like confrontations. After its US publication this ...
Ready, William B
(1914-1981) Welsh librarian and author, in the US from 1948 as professional librarian at several universities, and in Canada from 1966 in the same capacity at McMaster University. His first story, "Barring the Weight" for Atlantic Monthly in 1948, was not sf, but several of the tales assembled in The Great Disciple, and Other Stories (coll 1951) are of interest. He was best known, however, for his early study of J R R Tolkien, ...
Kruchten, Marcia H
(1932-2010) US author of a juvenile fantasy, The Ghost in the Mirror (1985 chap), and of a Tie to the Shared World Omni Odysseys sequence, Skyborn (1988; vt Skytorn 1988). [JC]
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 ...