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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
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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 ...
Whittemore, Edward
(1933-1995) US case officer for the CIA 1958-1987, specializing in Asia and the Middle East (where much of the action in his novels takes place), and author whose first novel, Quin's Shanghai Circus (1974), serves as a rampageous, gonzo prelude (see Horror in SF) to the rest of his small oeuvre. Fairly clearly influenced by authors like Thomas Pynchon, and perhaps Richard ...
Schmidt, Bryan Thomas
(1969- ) US author who has written sf from a Christian point of view (see Religion), as in his major work to date, the Saga of Davi Rhii comprising The Worker Prince (2012), Rivalry on a Sky Course: A Davil Rhii Story (2012 ebook) and The Returning (2013), whose female protagonist vigorously copes with traditional Space Opera trials, but whose faith remains ...
Toltz, Steve
(1972- ) Australian author whose first novel, A Fraction of the Whole (2008), grazes against elements of the fantastic (see Fantastika), rather in the manner of the early Peter Carey; the protagonist's essentially fraud-based election as Prime Minister of Australia evokes sf tales set in the very Near Future. Quicksand (2015) is also told in a ...
Wilson, Colin
(1931-2013) UK author of speculative works, who remains best known for his first book, The Outsider (1956), in which he gave graphic expression to the brilliant autodidactism, the erratic system-building mentality, the tendency to treat himself (and a previous few others) as a natural elite, and the voracity for new mental sensations that would mark the very numerous titles he would produce over the next several decades, many of them of direct or indirect interest to sf and ...
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 ...