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 ...
Alexander, David
Pseudonym used for sf by US author Lawrence Herskovits (1953- ), not to be confused with David Alexander [2] or David M Alexander below. Author of the Soldiers of War Western sequence as by William Reed; of the Phoenix sequence of Post-Holocaust military-sf adventures, comprising Dark Messiah (1987), ...
Holmberg, John-Henri
(1949- ) Swedish editor, translator and critic. An sf reader since the age of six, Holmberg became active in Swedish fandom at thirteen, during the following 25 years publishing some 300 issues of Fanzines, chairing sf clubs and several Conventions and in 1977 starting the first sf bookstore in Sweden. For his fan activities, he received the international Big Heart ...
McCarthy, Wil
Working name of US engineer and author William Terence McCarthy (1966- ) who began publishing sf with "What I Did with the OTV Grissom" for Aboriginal in May/June 1990; his first book appearance was the very thin chapbook Dirtyside Down (1991 chap dos). In his first novel, Aggressor Six (1994), which begins the two-volume Waisters sequence concluding with The Fall of Sirius (1996), ...
Djanikian, Ariel
(? - ) US author who is of sf interest for her first novel, The Office of Mercy (2013), a Young Adult tale set in a moderately distant Near Future world, specifically in an Underground Keep called America-Five, a name from which the existence of other versions of America, beyond the traditional ...
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 ...