SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Friday 18 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
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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 ...
Lathe of Heaven, The
Made-for-tv film (1980). TV Laboratory WNET/13, New York, for PBS. Produced and directed by David R Loxton and Fred Baryzk. Teleplay Roger E Swaybill, Diane English, based on The Lathe of Heaven (March-May 1971 Amazing; 1971) by Ursula K Le Guin. Cast includes Margaret Avery, Kevin Conway and Bruce Davison. 120 minutes. Colour. / Made outside the commercial system for Public Television, this may be the ...
Greenberger, Robert
(1958- ) US editor and author of a number of Star Trek Ties. Most of his work fits into the Star Trek: The Next Generation sub-universe, beginning with Star Trek, The Next Generation: Doomsday World (1990) with Carmen Carter, Peter David and Michael Jan ...
Theosophy
The Theosophical Society is an occult organization founded in 1875 by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831-1891) and two colleagues; it continues to exist, though in a state of schism. The doctrines propounded by this crypto-religion – theosophy means, literally, "knowledge of God" – have a relationship to Fantastika similar to that of nineteenth-century spiritualism in general, though the cosmological narrative embedded in the basic concepts comprises a ...
Swan, Christopher
(1946- ) US author whose Near Future tale of redemptive Ecology, YV88 (1977) with Chet Roaman, describes the transformation of the eponymous Yosemite Valley National Park by 1988 into an enclave no longer savaged by roads, rampant tourism, exploitation. A light railroad system replaces cars; the environmentally destructive O'Shaughnessy Dam. The vision was attractive, but as advocacy the book failed ...
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 ...