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Wednesday 16 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 ...
Cunningham, Beall
Working name of Dorothy Beall Cunningham (? -?), author of Wide White Page (1936), a tale featuring a modern Utopia founded in the Antarctic whose all-male equilibrium is upset by the arrival of a woman (see Women in SF); she is duly asked to leave. Cunningham also published at least three nonfantastic novels under her full name. She was alive in 1970. [DRL]
Aimard, Gustave
Pseudonym of French author Olivier Gloux (1818-1883), author of a large number of adventures set in the American West, many of them published in English in the Aimard's Tales of Indian Life sequence. Of those translated into English, two have been noted as being of genre interest: L'Eclaireur (1859; trans Lascelles Wraxall as The Indian Scout: A Story of the Aztec City 1861), a Lost Race tale; and L'Araucan (undated; ...
Nicholson, John H
(1838-1923) UK born schoolmaster and author, in Australia from 1859, who also published early work as by Tadberry Gilcobs and Salathiel Doles. He is of sf interest for The Adventures of Halek: An Autobiographical Fragment (1882; vt Halek: A Romance 1896; further vt Halek: A Romance: Companion of "Almoni" 1904) and its sequel, Almoni: Companion Volume to Halek (1904), which takes ...
Richards, Harvey D
Pseudonym of US military pilot and author Noël E Sainsbury Jr (1884-1956) for his Sorak sequence, beginning with Sorak of the Malay Jungle [for all subtitles see Checklist] (1934), and clearly intended to exploit the popularity of Tarzan. Sorak himself, and his animal companion (in this case, a tiger), are inherently as borderline-sf in their conception as Tarzan himself; but they venture (as does Tarzan) into sf territory, discovering a ...
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 ...