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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 ...
Purtill, Richard
(1931-2016) US academic and author whose first work of genre interest was the nonfiction study Lord of Elves and Eldils: Fantasy and Philosophy in C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien (1974); separate examinations of these two authors from a Christian standpoint followed [see Checklist below]. Purtill's Kaphtu Universe sequence, beginning with The Golden Gryphon Feather (1979) and extending to two trilogies, is fantasy inspired by archaeology and the myths of ancient ...
Wicks, Mark
(? -? ) UK author whose Scientific Romance To Mars Via the Moon: An Astronomical Story (1911) recounts the construction of a Spaceship capable of taking its bereaved solitary builder first to the Moon and then to Mars, which is described in accordance with the theories of Percival Lowell; ...
van Dresser, Peter
(1909-1983) US ecology pioneer and Rocket experimenter who also wrote sf, with eight stories published in the 1930s, though his contribution is now almost forgotten since only one was in a genre magazine. He was editor of Astronautics, Journal of the American Rocket Society, a member of their Experiment Committee, and one of a number of authors who pledged a portion of their story earnings to the Experiment Fund. He performed his own experiments; his papers ...
Benson, E F
(1867-1940) UK author, brother of A C Benson and Robert Hugh Benson, and by far the most prolific of the three as far as fiction is concerned, with dozens of attractive, realistic novels and romances to his credit, and a number of novels involving the supernatural. The most telling of these is perhaps his first in this mode, The Judgment Books (1895), which shows the influence of Oscar ...
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 ...