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
Sponsor of the day: The Telluride Institute
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 ...
ALF
US tv series (1986-1990). Warner Bros TV for NBC. Created by Paul Fusco and Ed Weinberger. Produced by Tom Patchett. Writers include Fusco, Patchett. Directors include Fusco, Patchett, Peter Bonerz. 25 minutes per episode. Colour. / ALF, an "alien life form" – in the line of extraterrestrial descent from My Favorite Martian and Mork in Mork & Mindy, though also influenced heavily by ...
Noyes, P J
(1844-? ) US author whose collection of spoofish tales about the medical profession, Why Doctor Dobson Became a Quack and Other Stories (coll 1910), contains several sf stories, at least on of which involves out-of-contro Inventions. Parker Jewitt Noyes should not be confused with Parker Jewett Noyes (1842-1912), an eminent druggist. [JC]
Takei, George
(1937- ) US actor and author, best known for his role as Mr Sulu in the original Star Trek. Mirror Friend, Mirror Foe (1979) with Robert Lynn Asprin places a Japanese mercenary and ninja in a free-for-all Near Future corporate world. To the Stars: The Autobiography of George Takei, Star Trek's Mr. Sulu (1994), though focusing on the ...
Finlay, Roger T
(? -? ) US author – possibly a pseudonym used for this sequence – known today only for the Wonder Island Boys series of adventures for the Young Adult market, featuring the exploits of its young castaway protagonists, who discover in the final volume of the series, The Wonder Island Boys: Treasures of the Islands (1915), that the natives of the Archipelago which ...
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 ...