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Thursday 16 July 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 14 July 2026
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Williams, F Chenhalls
(1880-1965) UK minister, inventor (he patented an improved sash window catch) and author of several novels, two of which are sf. The Inner Number (1927) features a thought-reading Machine (see Psionics) which generates a romantic melodrama; in The Potter's Wheel (1931) as F C Williams, a Mad Scientist dies horribly after attempting to kill his daughter with his ...
Aguirre, Ann
(1970- ) US author who also writes romance fiction as by Ava Gray; her romance sf sequence – the Sirantha Jax books including Grimspace (2008), Wanderlust (2008), Doubleblind (2009), Killbox (2010) and Aftermath (2011) – features a tough but emotionally vulnerable female protagonist in various Space Opera settings. The Corine Solomon sequence ...
Spacewar
Videogame (1962). Designed by Stephen Russell, J M Graetz, Wayne Wiitanen. Platforms: Mainframe, Arcade, Others. / While not the first game to be implemented using electronic hardware, Spacewar was the first such game with an original design, and the first to be widely distributed. Inspired by E E Smith's Lensman and Skylark series, the developers decided to write a game for the new PDP-1 minicomputer ...
Churchill, Winston S
(1874-1965) UK politician and author, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953; influential advocate of legalized Eugenics programmes, such as he (with others) expounded in the Mental Deficiency Act of 1912, with "deficiency" being defined in both medical and moral terms. His only novel, Savrola: A Tale of the Revolution in Laurania (May-December 1899 Macmillan's Magazine; 1900), is a ...
Robinson, W Heath
(1872-1944) UK artist, illustrator and author, brother of the book illustrator Charles Robinson (1870-1937). From 1897 he produced many finely composed, meticulously inked drawings and decorations for illustrated editions of fantasy by Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875), Miguel Cervantes (1547-1616), Charles Kingsley (1819-1875), Edgar Allan Poe, François Rabelais, Walter de la Mare (1873-1956), William ...
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 ...