SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Thursday 17 July 2025
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 16 July 2025
Sponsor of the day: Andy Richards of Cold Tonnage Books
Williams, Tess
(1954-2025) UK-born teacher, editor and author, in Australia for many years, there receiving a degree in literature from Curtin University and an MA in creative writing from the University of Western Australia. She began publishing work of genre interest with "The Padwan Affair" in She's Fantastical (anth 1995) edited by Judith Raphael Buckrich and Lucy Sussex. Of sf interest are two novels: Map of Power (1996), set mostly in a ...
Sullivan, Robert
(1953- ) US journalist and author, most of whose work has been nonfiction, much of it associated with Life magazine, where he served as a senior editor for many years. Of sf interest are two spoof "nonfiction" studies, both elaborately arrayed with confabulated documentary evidence about their subject matters. The first, The Flight of the Reindeer: The True Story of Santa Claus and his Christmas Mission (1996), is constructed in part around a ...
Johnson, Harold R
(1957-2022) Canadian lawyer and author, member of the Montreal Lake Cree Nation, active from around 2000; some of his several novels are of sf interest. In The Cast Stone (2011), a retired academic is forced in the Near Future to confront the effects of the recent American Invasion of Canada, and the imposition of a military regime upon Canadians; his experiences as a First Nations Canadian are now reflected in wider ...
"V"
1. Two US tv miniseries (1983, 1984) followed by a series (1984-1985). NBC. The first miniseries (1983), two 100-minute episodes, was titled "V" and created, written and directed by Kenneth Johnson. The second miniseries (1984), three 100-minute episodes, was titled V: The Final Battle and directed by Richard T Heffron, written Brian Taggert, Peggy Goldman, from a story by Lillian Weezer, Goldman, ...
Doughty, Francis W
(1850-1917) US numismatist, scholar, screenwriter and author whose well written, ingenious and original dime novels (see Dime-Novel SF) have often been considered the finest examples of the category. His better stories present a succession of highly imaginative strokes, often with good historical backgrounds. The title figure in "The Man in the Black Cloak" (1886 The Boys of New York) as by P T Raymond – a man whose betrayal has turned him ...
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 ...