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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 ...
Clarke, Percy
(? -? ) An author active in the 1880s and 1890s, either UK or Australian; set in Australia like his other works, his sf novel, The Valley Council; or, Leaves from the Journal of Thomas Bateman of Canbelago Station N. S. W. (1891), combines intimate details of outback life with the portrayal of a Lost Race society of Englishmen who, 150 years earlier, have established a rule-bound but ultimately flexible ...
Ferriss, Lucy
(1954- ) US author whose work – mostly nonfantastic – tends to explore personal and political issues with intimate intensity, and whose fourth novel, The Misconceiver (1997), is a Near Future examination of a Dystopian world ruled by a Christian "Coalition" in which abortions – now known as "misconceptions" – have become illegal. [JC]
Lee, Victoria
(? - ) US author whose Near Future Young Adult Dystopian Feverwake sequence beginning with The Fever King (2019) seems at first to offer an Equipoisal reading of the etiology and consequences of a virus-based Pandemic (see Disaster) that has balkanized ...
MacIsaac, Fred
(1882-1940) US author who appeared frequently in Argosy after World War One with stories in which his sober prophetic intelligence wrestles with his Pulp-magazine instincts, and usually loses. His work remains of interest, however. The Vanishing Professor (9-30 January 1926 Argosy All-Story Weekly; 1927) complicatedly engages a venal Scientist, inventor ...
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 ...