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
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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 ...
Scientific Detective Monthly
US letter-size magazine; ten monthly issues, January to October 1930, published from New York by Techni-Craft Publishing Co; edited by Hugo Gernsback, with Arthur B Reeve as editorial consultant. It was a sister magazine to Science Wonder Stories (see Wonder Stories) and Air Wonder Stories. From issue #6 it was retitled ...
Dunne, J W
(1875-1949) Irish engineer and author, in South Africa and the UK from early manhood; employed by the British War Office in 1906 to develop the monoplane he had envisioned, though nothing came of this. His two fantasies – The Jumping Lions of Borneo (1937 chap) and the more ambitious An Experiment with St George (1939) – are of some mild interest, but Dunne is now remembered almost exclusively for his theories about the nature of time, which he developed ...
Holly, Joan Hunter
A late working name of US author Joan Carol Holly (1932-1982), who before 1970 signed herself J Hunter Holly. She had a degree in psychology and conducted creative-writing workshops as well as doing her own work; a benign brain tumour, removed in 1970, interrupted her career 1966-1970, and she later suffered further ill health. She began publishing sf with a novel, Encounter (1959), in which Man and inimical Alien confront one another. Much of her work ...
Uhlemann, Max
(? -1862) German Egyptologist and author, known for his work on the Rosetta Stone; of sf interest is Drei Tage in Memphis [for full title and transcription see Checklist] (1856; trans anon as Three Days in Memphis; Or, Sketches of the Public and Private Life of the Old Egyptians 1858), an educational tale whose protagonists are conveyed to ancient Memphis by Time Travel. [JC]
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 ...