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
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 ...
Presland, John
Pseudonym of Australian poet, playwright and author Gladys Williams Skelton Bendit (1885-1975), in UK from early adulthood; she signed at least one novel, the nonfantastic Barricade (1926) as by John Presland and Gladys Skelton. Escape Me – Never! (1928) is set in the Near Future. Some of her poetry, like "Wisdom and Youth" in The Deluge and Other Poems (coll 1911) the long quasi-dramatic "The Quest" and others ...
Vance, Jack
Working name of US author John Holbrook Vance (1916-2013), who was educated at the University of California first as a mining engineer, then as a physics major and finally in journalism, though without taking a degree. During World War Two he served in the Merchant Navy, being twice torpedoed and writing his first story while in service, "The World-Thinker", which he published with Thrilling Wonder Stories, Summer 1945. In the late ...
Hale, Benjamin
(1983- ) US author whose first novel, The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore (2011), casually addresses issues of Evolution, though the first person narrator of the tale, an implausibly evolved chimpanzee (see Apes as Human), after describing his early years in a Zoo focuses primarily on the nature of language (see Linguistics) and ...
Fine, Stephen
(1949- ) US author whose first novel, Molly Dear: The Autobiography of an Android, or How I Came to my Senses, Was Repaired, Escaped my Master, and Was Educated in the Ways of the World (1988), rewrites Daniel Defoe's Moll Flanders (1722) as the memoirs of a twenty-first-century Android to satirical effect. Her innocence – assisted by memory wipes (see ...
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 ...