SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Saturday 19 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: Ansible Editions
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 ...
Walton, David
(1975- ) US physicist and author who has claimed that his Christian faith infuses but does not direct the arguments made in the Hard SF novels he has published to date; he has clearly distinguished between the theological truth of the Bible (for Christians) and the culture-bound language which seems to contradict a modern science, for instance the theory of Evolution. Walton began to publish work of genre interest ...
Johnson, Samuel
(1709-1784) UK poet, critic, playwright, lexicographer and author of one novel, The Prince of Abissinia: A Tale (1759; rev 1759; vt The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia: An Asiatic Tale 1768; vt The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia: A Tale 1787), written to pay for his mother's funeral (he got £100 – a large sum – for the first printing). The profusion of vts above comes from our normal practice of citing title ...
Boulle, Pierre
(1912-1994) French author who trained as an electrical engineer and spent eight years in Malaysia as a planter and soldier. His experience of the Orient permeated much of his early work, which was generally not sf; Le pont sur la rivière Kwaï (1952; trans Xan Fielding as The Bridge on the River Kwai 1954) remains his best-known novel. Boulle uses moral fable to pinpoint human absurdities, and his relatively large body of work in the sf genre is a good ...
Eisenstein, Alex
(1945- ) US author and illustrator whose fiction has been exclusively in collaboration with his wife, Phyllis Eisenstein, beginning with "The Trouble with the Past" for New Dimensions 1 (anth 1971) edited by Robert Silverberg; although only between five and ten stories are bylined with both names, their collaborative efforts extend throughout her work. Eisenstein is specifically ...
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 ...