SF Encyclopedia Home Page
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
Sponsor of the day: Andy Richards of Cold Tonnage Books
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 ...
Westerman, Percy F
(1876-1959) UK author who specialized in adventure tales for boys, though his protagonists were usually vigorous adults, as befitted their military/adventurer roles; and very frequently set at sea. He was the father of John F C Westerman. Of Westerman's 170 or more volumes between 1908 and 1959, several are Children's SF, the most successful of these being perhaps the first: The Flying Submarine (1912), an ...
Thiusen, Ismar
Pseudonym of Scottish-born academic and author John Macnie (1836-1909), in the USA from 1867 and on the faculty of North Dakota University 1885-1903. His Utopia, The Diothas, or A Far Look Ahead (1883; vt A Far Look Ahead, or The Diothas 1890; vt Looking Forward, or The Diothas 1890), set several millennia hence (almost but not quite in the Far Future), is prolific with suggestions of progress. ...
Red Planet
Film (2000). Warner Brothers Pictures presents in association with Village Roadshow Pictures and NPV Entertainment a Mark Canton Production. Directed by Antony Hoffman. Written by Chuck Pfarrer, Jonathan Lemkin. Cast includes Simon Baker, Benjamin Bratt, Val Kilmer, Carrie-Anne Moss, Tom Sizemore and Terence Stamp. 106 minutes. Colour. / Six astronauts are sent to Mars to examine why Terraforming efforts are mysteriously ...
Strange Horizons
US Online Magazine launched in September 2000, and published weekly ever since. Originally devised and edited by a team headed by Mary Anne Mohanraj (the first editor-in-chief) and Jed Hartman. Since then there has been a succession of editorial changes. Mohanraj stepped down at the end of 2003 to be replaced as editor-in-chief by Susan Marie Groppi with associate editors Karen Meisner and Brian Peters. Niall ...
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 ...