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 ...
Rand, Peter
(1942- ) US author of The Time of the Emergency (1977), an sf novel set in a world subsequent to a nuclear Holocaust – but how much farther into the future it is hard to distinguish – so that the abstract desert and surreal hotel that provide a stage for the four protagonists' shattered behaviour may in fact be described as inhabiting a Ruined Earth. [JC]
Maelstrom Speculative Fiction
US low-paying Print Magazine published and edited by David L Felts, Palm Harbor, Florida. It ran for eight issues from Summer 1998 to October 2001, and was in a slim (usually between 28 and 32 pages) large review size (see Magazines) format. Like many Amateur Magazines that emerged in the 1990s, the editor wanted to publish material that was out of the ordinary and would make the reader ...
Kellett, E E
(1864-1950) UK schoolmaster and author, in whose one book of fiction, A Corner in Sleep and Other Impossibilities (coll 1900), some stories of sf interest can be found: mainly perhaps "The New Frankenstein" (May 1899 Pearson's), the facetious tale of a Robot entangled in a web of useless Inventions, and "Memoria Ponderosa", about an experimental ...
Pudney, John
(1909-1977) UK editor, poet, journalist and author, initially best known as a poet, beginning with his first book, Spring Encounter (coll 1933 chap); his most famous single poem is "For Johnny" (1941 News Chronicle), a ballad-like ode on the deaths of airmen published after the Battle of Britain (see World War Two). Some of the tales assembled in It Breathed Down my Neck: A Selection of Stories (coll 1946) are supernatural. ...
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 ...