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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 ...
Children Who Chase Lost Voices
Japanese animated film (2011; vt Journey to Agartha). Original title Hoshi o Ou Kodomo. CoMix Wave Films. Directed and written by Makoto Shinkai. Voice cast includes Kazuhiko Inoue, Miyu Irino and Hisako Kanemoto. 116 minutes. Colour. / Young Asuna Watase (Kanemoto), raised by her widowed and busy mother, often goes to the nearby mountains to listen to the sounds on her crystal radio. She's rescued from a ...
Lewis, D B Wyndham
(1891-1969) UK journalist, anthologist and author; his first given name, Llewellyn, was changed to Dominic in 1921, apparently to mark his conversion to Catholicism (there seems to be no record of his having earlier been known as Leg Before Wicket Lewis). In active service for almost the whole of World War One, he became active as a writer only in 1919, when he took over the fledgling "By the Way" column in the London Daily Express under the ...
Hooker, Le Roy
(1840-1906) Canadian minister and author, perhaps best known for a long poem in praise of the United Empire Loyalists (British subjects who emigrated northwards during and after the American Revolutionary War); of sf interest is Enoch The Philistine: A Traditional Romance of Philistia, Egypt and the Great Pyramid (1898), a Lost Race tale told in the first person by a man who experiences romance and desperation in the Middle East. [JC]
Farr, David
(1969- ) UK director, screenwriter, playwright and author, active in various capacities in the UK Theatre from around 1990, including the direction of several plays. The dramaturgical thrust of several of his dramas engage with Fantastika, though at times only metaphorically. The Nativity (performed 1999; 1999 chap) edgily literalizes various miracles and manifestations clustered around Mary the ...
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 ...