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 ...
Lethem, Jonathan
(1964- ) US author, married 1987-1998 to Shelley Jackson, who began publishing work of sf interest with "The Unexpurgated Zap Gun: A Report" for The Philip K Dick Society Newsletter #15 in 1987, the first of several pieces on Philip K Dick whose natural – though not inevitable – culmination was his editing for the Library of America three Dick omnibuses, beginning with ...
Bretnor, Reginald
(1911-1992) US author and anthologist, born Alfred Reginald Kahn – he changed his name legally to Bretnor after World War Two – in Vladivostok, Siberia, but resident in the US from 1920; active after World War Two in a number of genres as an author of both fiction and nonfiction. His interest in military theory, which first generated articles and Decisive Warfare (1969), later inspired the Future at War series of anthologies: ...
Horizon Zero Dawn
Videogame (2017). Guerrilla Games, Sony Interactive Entertainment. Directed by Mathijs de Jonge. Written by John Gonzalez and Men McCaw, additional writing by Meg Jayanth, Ben Schroder, Anne Toole, Dee Warrick. Cast includes Ashly Burch, JB Blanc, John Hopkins, Crispin Freeman, Lance Reddick, Nicolette McKenzie and Josh Keaton. Playstation 4 and PC. / In a Post-Holocaust world where the memory of present-day humanity ...
Thomson, James
Working name of Scottish poet and author James Thompson (1834-1882), best known for "The City of Dreadful Night" (1874 National Reformer as Bysshe Vanolis; 1975 chap), a long narrative poem whose rendering of an apocalyptic City very much like London contains a profusion of images and tropes that prefigure Steampunk and Urban Fantasy (see The ...
Langford, David
(1953- ) UK author, critic, editor, publisher and sf fan, in the latter capacity recipient of 21 Hugo awards for fan writing – some of the best of his several hundred pieces are assembled as Let's Hear It for the Deaf Man (coll 1992 chap US; much exp vt The Silence of the Langford 1996; exp 2015 ebook) as Dave Langford, edited by Ben Yalow – plus five Best Fanzine Hugos ...