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
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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 ...
McGuire, Richard
(1957- ) US comics artist and author whose Graphic Novel Here (graph 2014), which began as a short story in graphic form, "Here" (January 1989 RAW), is of considerable sf interest. The basic structure of the enterprise is non-chronological. Each double-page panel gives a perspectivally invariant view of a single location in north-eastern America, probably semi-rural New Jersey, so that the "tale" is locked in space. ...
October, John
Pseudonym of UK author Christopher Portway (1923-2009) whose sf novel for Robert Hale Limited, The Anarchy Pedlars (1976), is set in a Near Future world threatened by a revived cult of assassins. [JC]
Sloan, Robin
(1979- ) US author whose Penumbra sequence beginning with Mr Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore (short version 2009 Escape Pod EP215; 2012) is set mainly in and around the eponymous very Near Future (dating from 2009) San Francisco bookshop (see California), and sf and fantasy turns (see Equipoise) to explore the nature of the physical book, its cultural ...
Morton, J B
(1893-1979) UK author active from before World War One, then in active service 1914-1916, his war experiences being reflected in his first (untypical) novel, The Barber of Putney (1919; rev 1934); his second book, Gorgeous Poetry: 1911-1920: First Series (coll 1920 chap) as by J B M, containing travesties of unnamed poets he contemned as Modernists, established his lasting tone of voice, which soon found full expression in ...
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 ...