SF Encyclopedia Home Page
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
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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 ...
Lane, Jane
Pseudonym of UK author Elaine Kidner Dakers (1905-1978), author under her own name of a biography, Titus Oates (1949), and author of many esteemed historical novels under as by Lane. Her Post-Holocaust sf novel, A State of Mind (1964), is set in an Orwell-like totalitarian Dystopia, an England where both god and monarchy have been banned. [JC]
Mutiny in Outer Space
Film (1965). Hugo Grimaldi Film Productions. Directed by Hugo Grimaldi and Arthur C Pierce (uncredited). Written by Arthur C Pierce. Cast includes Carl Crow, Pamela Curran, James Dobson, Dolores Faith, Richard Garland, Glenn Langan and William Leslie. 82 minutes. Black and white. / Astronauts Gordon Towers (Leslie) and Dan Webber (Crow), returning from the Moon with samples from newly discovered "ice caves", stop at Space Station X-7 (see ...
Incredibles, The
Animated film (2004). Disney/Pixar Animation Studios. Written and directed by Brad Bird. 120 minutes. Cast includes Maeve Andrews, Bird, Spencer Fox, Eli Fucile, Holly Hunter, Samuel L Jackson, Jason Lee, Craig T Nelson and Sarah Vowell. Colour. / Superhero Bob Parr (Nelson), known as Mr Incredible, is forced into early retirement – along with his colleagues – by lawsuits over the collateral damage of his crime-fighting heroics. Fifteen ...
Magic Realism
A term originally used to describe a form of literature most commonly associated with twentieth-century Latin America, most notably in the works of Isabel Allende (1942- ), Miguel Angel Asturias (1899-1974), Jorge Luis Borges, Alejo Carpentier (1904-1980), Guillermo Cabrera Infante (1929-2005), Gabriel García Márquez (1928-2014) and Juan Rulfo (1918-1986). English-language practitioners include Donald ...
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 ...