SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Thursday 17 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 ...
Radiohead
UK rock group from the Oxford area. Their early work is recognizable, if high quality, "indie" rock, haunted by and expressive of contemporary anomie and angst. But the band's third album OK Computer (1997) exaggerated this individual sense of despair into a coherent and powerful Dystopian vision. Douglas Adams' The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy was ...
Letcher, Montgomery E
(? -? ) US author of Wonderful Discovery: Being an Account of a Recent Exploration of the Celebrated Mammoth Cave in Edmonson County, Kentucky, by Dr Rowan, Professor Simmons and Others, of Louisville, to its Termination in an Inhabited Region, in the Interior of the Earth (1839 chap): a Lost World tale told as a hoax – after the example of Edgar Allan Poe and others ...
Walderick, Frederick
(? -? ) UK author the protagonist of whose The Prophet (1907) travels to Tibet, where he encounters Theosophists who give him a "moon potion", a Drug which activates previous dormant parts of the human brain. After taking the drug, he gains Psi Powers including Telepathy and the ability to predict events twenty-fours in advance ...
Wu Yan
(1962- ) Chinese author, Beijing-born but of Manchu ethnicity, whose education encompassed psychology and a management PhD, and whose work includes the teaching of science fiction at Beijing Normal University. His first story, "Adventure in an Iceberg" (1978 Shaonian Kexue), was published when he was only 16, establishing him as an author before the academic career that truly supported him. Wu Yan has often appeared in ...
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 ...