SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Saturday 19 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.
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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 ...
Knapp, Florence
(? - ) UK author whose first book, the nonfiction Flossie Teacake's Guide to English Paper Piecing (2018), which analyses and gives lessons in how to weave patchwork paper images out of sometimes disparate materials, may seem in its register to deal with issues cognate with the structuring of her first novel. In The Names (2025), a mother with three choices of a name for her newborn son chooses all three, creating a ...
Murray, Kate
(? -? ) UK author of The Blue Star (1907), featuring the Invention of an electrical device capable of transferring vital energy from one body to another. [JC]
Gann, W D
(1878-1955) US finance trader and author, deeply involved in prognosticating the market, applying mathematics and astrology in his attempts (financially successful) to predict share prices. Most of his nonfiction dealt not only with stockmarket predictions but with the future in general (see Futures Studies). He is of sf interest for The Tunnel Thru' the Air; Or, Looking Back from 1940 (1927), a Near Future tale ...
Helprin, Mark
(1947- ) US author who served in the British Merchant Navy and the Israeli armed forces, experiences transmuted in A Dove of the East and Other Stories (coll 1975), which contains some fantasies. He is best known for Winter's Tale (1983), an epic Urban Fantasy [see The Encyclopedia of Fantasy under links below] set in an imaginary New York. The novel ...
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 ...