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
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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 ...
Stead, Rebecca
(1968- ) US author whose Young Adult novels of sf interest include First Light (2007), where a boy, visiting Greenland with his scientist father to measure global warming (see Climate Change) meets a young Culture Hero woman from an Underground Utopia who wants to lead her people back into the light; and When You Reach Me ...
Verso, Francesco
(1973- ) Italian editor, publisher and author, a whirlwind force behind World SF, in the service of which he established the Future Fiction publishing house. As both an sf writer and editor, Verso is deeply committed to extrapolatory explorations of Near-Future Earth. An early notable novel is Livido (2013; trans Sally McCorry as Nexhuman 2014), for which he ...
Gulliver
Lemuel Gulliver is the narrator of Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. In Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and Then a Captain of Several Ships (1726; rev 1735) by Jonathan Swift, better known as Gulliver's Travels, the short-form title by which it immediately became known by its commentators and critics. It is one of the most widely recognized literary texts of the eighteenth century and has been a ...
Mariner, David
Pseudonym of Scottish author David McLeod Smith (1920- ) under which name he wrote an unremarkable tale about Space Flight, international conspiracy and attempted assassination, A Shackleton Called Sheila (1970: vt Countdown 1000 1974) for Robert Hale Limited. [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 ...