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 ...
O'Doherty, Carolyn
(? - ) US executive in a non-profit institute devoted to city planning, and author whose Rewind trilogy, beginning with Rewind (2018), is sharply Equipoisal between Young Adult fantasy and sf, the use of whose topoi hints at serious underlying arguments. Much of the tale is set in or concerns the escape from a coercive Keep where, in a ...
Winslow, Pauline Glen
(1926-2014) UK author, long resident in the USA, in whose I, Martha Adams (1982) the Cold War suddenly ends in a Russian nuclear strike (see World War Three) and the Near-Future Invasion of an unprepared America. Luckily the (now assassinated) President Reagan had secretly redirected funds meant for socialist water projects into developing a secret ...
Deese, Isadora
(? - ) US author whose Young Adult Roan and Judge Gorey sequence beginning with Right of Capture (2016) is set in a Near Future world transmogrified – and our reality opened to other Dimensions – by a mysterious Power Source seemingly embedded, perhaps as a result of ...
Ryman, Ras
Pseudonym of UK author James D Brown (? - ) for three Space Operas published by Robert Hale Limited; they are The Quadrant War (1976) – a Space Opera of War between rival interstellar empires – Day of the Ultramind (1977) and Weavers of Death (1981) [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 ...