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Wednesday 16 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 ...
Booth, Walter R
(1869-1938) UK filmmaker; initially a stage magician, Booth met British film pioneer Robert W Paul (1869-1943) and shortly after began directing for his production company, Paul's Animatograph Works. Some early films simply recorded conjuring tricks but others had a narrative element, built round Booth's ability to use his stage-magic skills for special effects in this new medium. He worked for Paul until 1906, then for Charles Urban's (1867-1942) production companies: Charles Urban Trading ...
Nicholas, J T
(? - ) US author whose New Lyons sequence beginning with SINthetic (2018) in which "Synths" (which is to say Androids) rebel from the condition of Slavery they have been manufactured for; the series, set primarily in New Orleans, focuses on Cyberpunk-inflected action. In Re-Coil (2020), a singleton ...
Melko, Paul
(1968- ) US author whose education was in nuclear engineering, and who began publishing work of genre interest with "Dysfunctional Family Cat" for Aberrations #39 in 1996; as his fiction focuses on problem-solving (see Hard SF; Thought Experiment) and tends to reward problem-solvers with solutions helpful to them and/or the world at large, he can be understood as an inheritor of the mode and thrust ...
Lucas, Penelope
(? - ) UK author of Wilderness Moon (1991), a Prehistoric SF tale set in northern Siberia 30,000 years ago with Equipoisal shamans. [JC]
Robinson, Roger
(1943- ) UK computer programmer, bibliographer and publisher, active in UK Fandom for many years. The Writings of Henry Kenneth Bulmer (1983 chap; rev 1984 chap) is an exhaustive Bibliography of one of the most prolific sf writers, Kenneth Bulmer, and Who's Hugh?: An SF Reader's Guide to Pseudonyms (1987) is similarly exhaustive in its ...