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 ...
Kellogg, Vernon
(1867-1937) US entomologist, biologist and author; initially a pacifist in World War One, he recorded that his shock at the brutal implications of the Social Darwinism promulgated by senior German officers he met forced a change of mind, as he recorded in Headquarters Nights [for subtitle see Checklist below] (1917) (see also Eugenics). These encounters may have inspired ...
Erdman, Alan T
(1946- ) US author whose first novel, Maximum Security: The Mojave Project (2006), polemically examines the California penal system in 2032 (see Crime and Punishment), after a 2016 earthquake has caused the dispersal of facilities, and the Supreme Court's judging capital punishment to be unconstitutional has forced other changes. [JC]
Editorial Practices
In Notes on Content we briefly describe the principles governing the encyclopedia's construction, and the kinds of information which may be found here. We have tried throughout to present this material as clearly as possible, but some pointers may be helpful, as below. For information on the bibliographic Checklists now appearing at the ends of entries, see Editorial Practices: Checklists. / ...
3SF
UK A4-size Slick magazine published by Ben Jeapes, Big Engine Co, London, and edited by Liz Holliday. It saw only three bimonthly issues, October 2002 to February 2003, before the publishing company went into liquidation. A fourth issue was completed but not printed. Although printed on good quality coated paper, 3SF lacked the glitz and sparkle of Liz Holliday's previous magazine Odyssey and, when ...
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 ...