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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.
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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 ...
Attack Vector: Tactical
Cardboard models-based Wargame (2004). Ad Astra Games. Designed by Ken Burnside, Eric Finley, Tony Valle. / Attack Vector is a rare example of a game which, like Battlefleet Mars (1977) and Independence War: The Starship Simulator (1997), approaches space combat in a physically realistic way. Newtonian mechanics and accurate analyses of ...
Avery, Anne
Pseudonym of US author Anne Holmberg (1938- ), mostly of historical romances under several names, also including Kate Holmes and Anne Woodward. She is of sf interest for several romantic Space Operas, including A Distant Star (1993), in which a colony planet at the end of the Long Night after empire is under observation pending its return to galactic civilization; All's Fair ...
Rieder, John
(1952- ) US academic with the Department of English at the University of Hawaii from 1980 until he retired in 2018; a member of the editorial board of Extrapolation. His Colonialism and the Emergence of Science Fiction (2008) is an important study of the colonialism and Imperialism themes in sf (including Gothic SF) from its beginnings to the ...
Billett, Mabel Broughton
(1892-1964) Canadian author, in USA from 1936; of her four detective novels, one is of some sf interest. In The Robot Detective (1932), an immobile Robot, fed information through punch-cards (and better perhaps described as a primitive Computer), discusses a case with his/its human operator, who then goes out into the British Columbia landscape to capture the villain. Her fourth novel, "The Smooth Silence" (1936 ...
Clute, John
(1940- ) Canadian critic, editor and author, in the UK from 1969; married to Judith Clute from 1964, partner of Elizabeth Hand since 1996. He began to publish work of genre interest with an sf-tinged poem "Carcajou Lament" in Triquarterly for Winter 1960 [ie Autumn 1959]; he began consistently publishing sf reviews in his "New Fiction" column for the Toronto Star (1966-1967), and later in ...