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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 ...
Eberhard, Frederick G
(1889-1944) US author of crime thrillers, active in the 1930s; though all of his work is sensationalist, the tale closest to genuine sf is The Microbe Murders (1935), which touches on reanimation and invokes a Drug with strange powers. [JC]
Palmer, Diana
Pseudonym of US author Susan Spaeth Kyle (1946- ), who has also published occasionally under her own name; most of her many novels are Westerns or romance tales, usually as by Palmer. Of sf interest is The Morcai Battalion (1980; rev 2008 as by Palmer), a Space Opera set in a Galactic Empire riven by a vast war. [JC]
Dickinson, John
(1962- ) UK author, son of Peter Dickinson, who began publishing work of genre interest with "One for Sorrow" in Fear for March 1990; most of his subsequent work has been fantasy, including the Young Adult Cup of the World sequence beginning with The Cup of the World (2004) and the Muddle and Win sequence for younger children beginning with ...
Trudno byt' bogom
1. Film (1989; vt Hard To Be a God). Dovzhenko Studio/Halleluya Film GMBH/VO Sovexportfilm. Directed by Peter Fleischmann. Written by Fleischmann, Jean-Claude Carriere, Dal Orlov, based on Trudno byt' bogom (1964; trans as Hard to be a God 1973) by Arkady and Boris Strugatski. Cast includes Andrei Boltnev, Edward Dzentara, Alexander Filippenko, Ann Gautier, Mikhail Gluzsky, Werner Herzog and Christina ...
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 ...