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Sunday 20 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 ...
Bell, Clare
(1952- ) UK-born author, in the US from 1957; a test-equipment engineer for a computer firm 1978-1990. She began publishing sf with Ratha's Creature (1983) – the first volume of the Ratha sequence of juveniles (also known as The Named), followed by Clan Ground (1984), Ratha and Thistle-Chaser (1990) and Ratha's Challenge (1995) – which delineates the lives of a ...
Jarre, Jean Michel
(1948- ) French composer and performer of electronic synthesizer pieces. There is no explicit sf content to the instrumental suites Oxygene (1976), Equinoxe (1978) and Les Chants Magnétiques (1981) but it is hard to escape the sense that these bleepy, throbbing, soaring soundscapes are aural SF. Jarre is certainly fascinated by space. The last track of Rendez-Vous (1986), "La Derniere Rendez-Vous" is dedicated ...
Kellermann, Bernhard
(1879-1951) German author whose Near Future sf novel, Der Tunnel (1913; trans anon as The Tunnel 1915), describes the construction of a transatlantic tunnel (see Under the Sea) over a twenty-six year span; the future anticipated by Kellermann has no World War One, in which he served as an active foreign correspondent. Der Tunnel was ...
Moore, F Frankfort
(1855-1931) Irish journalist, playwright and author, active from 1875, some of whose eighty or more novels contain supernatural elements; his satires against the idea of Irish Home Rule are not fantastic. Tales of sf interest include The Secret of the Court: A Romance of Life and Death (1895), in which a vast Underground complex is discovered beneath contemporary Egypt, home of the remnants of an ancient Lost Race ...
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 ...