SF Encyclopedia Home Page
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
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 ...
Cloaking Device
Term for an Invisibility screen used by Spaceships, popularized by Star Trek. It first appears as a Romulan Invention in the original-series episode "Balance of Terror" (1966), and continues to be used by Romulans and later Klingons (though not, for treaty reasons, the USS Enterprise itself) in later Star Trek incarnations. [DRL]
Theobald, Robert
(1929-1999) Indian-born economist and author, in UK from 1945, in US from around 1960; an exponent of the need for alternative Technologies and strategies to survive the turn of the century (see Futures Studies); his several texts culminate in An Alternative Future for America's Third Century (1976). His sf novel, Teg's 1994: An Anticipation of the Near Future (1972) with J M Scott, carries on these ...
Crawshay-Williams, Eliot
(1879-1962) UK politician (Liberal Member of Parliament 1910-1913), playwright and author, whose surname at birth was Williams; when he adopted the full hyphenated surname is uncertain; in active service during World War One, and as a playwright (his dramas were nonfantastic) from around 1930. His first novel of any sf interest, Night in No Time: A Novel (1946) is a Timeslip fantasy. His ...
Smith, William Hawley
(1845-1922) US educator and author whose first novel, The Evolution of "Dodd," in His Struggle for the Survival of the Fittest in Himself: Tracing his Chances, his Changes, and How He Came Out (1884) [see Checklist for vt and other data], examines Social Darwinism cursorily. Of sf interest is very Near Future The Promoters: A Novel without a Woman (1904), whose shady protagonists hope to apply to ...
Langford, David
(1953- ) UK author, critic, editor, publisher and sf fan, in the latter capacity recipient of 21 Hugo awards for fan writing – some of the best of his several hundred pieces are assembled as Let's Hear It for the Deaf Man (coll 1992 chap US; much exp vt The Silence of the Langford 1996; exp 2015 ebook) as Dave Langford, edited by Ben Yalow – plus five Best Fanzine Hugos ...