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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.
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 ...
Jarrett, David
(1943-2010) Welsh author, mostly on the history and theory of gardening, though The Gothic Form in Fiction and Its Relation to History (1980) includes sharp studies of various authors, among them Franz Kafka (see Gothic SF). He is of sf interest for Withering (1979), which begins as a Twice-Told rendering of the legend of the Seventh Swan [for Twice-Told see The ...
de Nikolits, Lisa
(1966- ) South-African art director and author, in Canada from 2000, active in the latter capacity from around 2010. Her first novels were nonfantastic, with strong autobiographical threads. The Witchdoctor's Bones (2014) is a fantasy set in Africa, and The Occult Persuasion and the Anarchist's Solution (2019) confabulates supernatural healings and what may be a sound critique of latterday capitalism. The protagonist ...
Mosura
Film (1961; vt Mothra). Toho. Directed by Ishirō Honda. Written by Shinichi Sekizawa, based on a story by Shinichiro Nakamura, Takehido Fukunaga, Yoshi Hotta. Cast includes Emi Ito, Yumi Ito, Kyoko Kagawa, Hiroshi Koizumi and Frankie Sakai. 100 minutes. Colour. / Aficionados of Japanese Monster Movies find their delight not only in the monsters themselves: the attraction depends also on the sheer bizarreness, to Western eyes and ears, ...
Nicholas, John
(? - ) UK author of a book-length Near Future sf poem, Saturnalia in the Suburbs: A Comic Poem (1940 chap), set in 1988 after a mysterious impulse – ordained by the gods, impatient with the tediousness of British life – causes everyone to wander about the countryside naked, abandoning London to a vast conflagration. The mildness of the Satire, ...
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 ...