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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.
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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 ...
Rochester, George E
(1898-1966) UK author; his experiences in active service during World War One inspired much of his fiction, most of it written for boys under his own and several other names, including John Beresford, Frank Chaltam, Barton Furse, Jeffrey Gaunt, Eric Roche and Hamilton Smith. Much of this output did not reach book form, including his first known sf tale, "The Black Vulture" (28 April-23 June 1934 Scoops), about a ...
Lyttelton, Thomas
(1744-1779) UK politician, author and poet, best known as a libertine, and for his volatile side-changing in Parliament on the subject of the American colonies, as they began to achieve independence. He is of sf interest for the posthumous Poems, by a Young Nobleman ...; Particularly the State of England, and The once flourishing City of London. In a Letter from an American Traveller, Dated from the Ruinous Portico of St Paul's, in the Year 2199 ... [for full title see Checklist] (coll ...
Matter Penetration
The ability to walk through walls or be otherwise transported through solid matter is a wish-fulfilment fantasy less prevalent than Invisibility, perhaps owing to its greater scientific implausibility. The first sf example is perhaps "The Ray of Displacement" (October 1903 The Metropolitan Magazine) by Harriet Prescott Spofford, whose titular Ray diffuses an individual's atoms and ...
Graedon, Alena
(? - ) US author whose Dystopia The Word Exchange (2014), set in a recognizable Near Future New York, posits a coercively immersive Internet with most of the population glued to "Memes" (see Meme), and physical books almost entirely destroyed. The protagonist Anana's father, while editing the last ...
Robinson, Roger
(1943- ) UK computer programmer, bibliographer and publisher, active in UK Fandom for many years. The Writings of Henry Kenneth Bulmer (1983 chap; rev 1984 chap) is an exhaustive Bibliography of one of the most prolific sf writers, Kenneth Bulmer, and Who's Hugh?: An SF Reader's Guide to Pseudonyms (1987) is similarly exhaustive in its ...