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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 ...
Wongar, B
Apparent pseudonym of Yugoslav-born author Streten Bozic (1932- ), in Australia from 1960; for some time, both names gave pause to researchers, as "Streten Bozic" could apparently be understood to mean "Merry Christmas" in Serbian, and "Birimbir Wongar" can be translated, from an Arnhem Land Aboriginal tongue, as something like "Dreaming Soul or Visitor", and "Banumbir Wongar", a version of the name used for a period, can be translated as something like "Spirit ...
Hopkins, Pauline
(1859-1940) US editor, journalist, playwright, actor and author active from around 1880, whose difficult literary career (she was African-American) ended after the publication of her fourth novel, Of One Blood; Or, the Hidden Self (November 1902-January 1903 The Colored American Magazine; 2004). The protagonist of the tale – a medical student in Boston named Reuel Briggs, passing for white at a time of ferocious prejudice in America – becomes enamoured of a ...
Smith Spark, Anna
(? - ) UK author known mainly for her grimdark fantasy [for Dark Fantasy here and Hidden Monarch below see The Encyclopedia of Fantasy under links below], who has also written as Anna Smith-Spark; she began to publish work of genre interest with "A Moment in the Conquest of the World" in BFS Horizons for August 2017. Her first series, the Empires of Dust sequence beginning with ...
Krepps, Robert W
(1919-1980) US author whose sf and fantasy work mostly appeared under the pseudonym Geoff St Reynard. As St Reynard he began publishing work of genre interest with "Wink Van Ripple" in Fantastic Adventures for December 1945, contributing frequently to that journal until its demise in 1953. Work published here included the first Usurpers tale, "The Usurpers" (January 1950 Fantastic Adventures), which was ...
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 ...