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 ...
Cryogenics
From a Greek root meaning "cold-producing", this word is used in Physics to mean the production of extremely low temperatures and the study of phenomena at those temperatures. The shorter word Cryonics was more commonly used in sf Terminology when – as is usual – it is people or other living organic materials that are frozen. This short version has since been adopted for real-world freezing of ...
Sketchley, Arthur
Pseudonym of UK playwright and author George Rose (1817-1882), the first of whose series of comic sketches presenting the erratic lower-class opinions of Mrs Brown was "How Mrs Brown Spent Christmas Day" (in Routledge's Annual, anth 1866). Her responses to George T Chesney's The Battle of Dorking (1871 chap), which she believes to be factual, are given in Mrs Brown on the Battle of Dorking (1871 chap) (see ...
Lessner, Erwin
(1898-1959) Austrian journalist, soldier and author who escaped to the US from occupied Europe in 1941, becoming a naturalized US citizen in 1946. His telling Near Future Satire, Phantom Victory: The Fourth Reich 1945-1960 (1944), begins with the surrender of Hitler's double and the disappearance of the genuine Führer as his forces melt into the civilian background after Germany loses ...
Karlins, Marvin
(1941- ) US academic and author, usually of nonfiction relating to his professional work as a Professor of Management. His first book is sf, The Last Man Is Out (1969; vt The New Atoms' Bombshell 1980 as by Robert Browne), a Near Future tale in which a bored scientist uses Computers and other devices to maximize outcomes for the Baseball team he has ...
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 ...