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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
Sponsor of the day: Andy Richards of Cold Tonnage Books
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 ...
Ice Pirates, The
Film (1984). MGM/United Artists. Directed by Stewart Raffill. Written by Raffill, Stanford Sherman. Cast includes Mary Crosby, Anjelica Huston, John Matuszak, Ron Perlman, Michael D Roberts and Robert Urich. 94 minutes. Colour. / Sf Parodies have seldom worked well in the cinema, but this is an exception. Jason (Urich) is a pirate captain of a Spaceship (he and his crew carry cutlasses and wear high boots) who raids merchant ...
Grey Goo
Popular term (also spelt "gray goo" in the USA) for the nightmare scenario of uncontrolled Nanotechnology in which the hypothetical tiny self-replicators reproduce without limit, converting all available organic matter – or in some cases inorganic matter, or both – into more and yet more devouring grey goo. Such a Disaster is threatened but averted in Assemblers of Infinity (September-December 1992 ...
Kendall, John
Pseudonym of UK author Margaret Maud Brash (1880-1965), author of historical novels under her own name. Her Scientific Romance, Unborn Tomorrow (1933) as John Kendall, describes an ultimately dysfunctional Eugenics-dominated Dystopia set in a 1996 UK dehumanized and regimented under Communist rule. The birth rate plummets in the States of the United World; worldly goods do not ...
Coffindaffer, Rebecca
(? - ) US author whose Young Adult Crownchasers Space Opera sequence, beginning with Crownchasers (2020), follows the tribulations of an heir to the throne of a Galactic Empire after she discovers that she – and other aspirants – must chase a "royal seal" down the star lanes; the one who finds this ...
Robinson, Roger
(1943- ) UK computer programmer, bibliographer and publisher, active in UK Fandom for many years. The Writings of Henry Kenneth Bulmer (1983 chap; rev 1984 chap) is an exhaustive Bibliography of one of the most prolific sf writers, Kenneth Bulmer, and Who's Hugh?: An SF Reader's Guide to Pseudonyms (1987) is similarly exhaustive in its ...