SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Saturday 19 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 ...
Eight Legged Freaks
Film (2002). Warner Brothers Pictures presents in association with Village Roadshow Pictures and NPV Entertainment an Electric Entertainment Production. Directed by Ellory Elkayem. Produced by Dean Devlin and Bruce Berman. Written by Jesse Alexander, Ellory Elkayem from a story by Elkayem and Randy Kornfield. Cast includes David Arquette, Doug E Doug, Scarlett Johansson, Scott Terra and Kari Wuhrer. 99 minutes. Colour. / This likeable Monster Movie ...
Wolf, Christa
(1929-2011) German author, most of whose creative life was spent in East Germany, where her career was difficult but ultimately – though perhaps not until her last decade – recognized in moat-defensive reunited Germany as triumphant. "Selbstversuch" ["Self-Experiment"] (February 1973 Sinn und Form), filmed for Television as Selbstversuch (1990) directed by Peter Bird, is a radical exercise in ...
John, Owen
(1918-1995) UK author, mostly of spy thrillers, whose Computer Takes All (1967) as by John Bourne visualizes a Dystopian outcome to the rise of the Computer; and whose Haggai Godin sequence sometimes comes close to sf, especially The Shadow in the Sea (1972), which ventures into Near Future territory in its description of a mysterious Russian submarine off the British ...
Trevor, Ralph
Pseudonym of UK author James Reginald Wilmot (1897-1944), active for nine years as a crime novelist before his early death; he also wrote as by Frances Stuart. He is of minor sf interest for The Ghost Counts Ten (1938), a thriller featuring a heat-melting Ray. [JC]
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 ...