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Sunday 22 June 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.
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Forsyth, Frederick
(1938-2025) UK author who gained fame with his first novel, The Day of the Jackal (1971), and whose books are generally political thrillers. The Shepherd (1975 chap), however, is a sentimental Timeslip or ghost fantasy in which a pilot on Christmas Eve 1957 is saved from crashing by a World War Two pilot in an antique bomber: pilot and plane had been shot down on the Christmas Eve of 1943. ...
Politics
Most of the works which we can characterize with hindsight as Proto SF are political fantasies. The earnest and constructive aspect of this endeavour is generally displayed in Utopias, the mocking and corrosive aspect in Satires. The desire to make political statements has continued to be the main motive force in works of sf by Mainstream Writers, although modern ...
Gilman, Carolyn Ives
(1954- ) US historian and author whose nonfiction works, beginning with The Northern Expeditions of Stephen H. Long (1978) with Lucile M Kane and June D Holmquist, focus on the exploration and history of the American Mid West, and who began publishing work of genre interest with "The Trial of Victor Genovese" for Tales of the Unanticipated, Fall 1986, soon establishing a reputation for cognitively challenging work, often from a standpoint of a late, ...
Giles, Harry Josephine
(1986- ) UK actor and author, in Orkney from childhood; active from around 2008. They are of sf interest for Deep Wheel Orcadia (2021), a book-length narrative poem whose original text, composed in Orcadian, is accompanied by an English version by the author whose seeming paraphrastic excesses constitute a critique of the ability of English words to capture complex realities. The tale is set in the Near Future on a ...
Kilroy-Silk, Robert
(1942- ) UK broadcaster, politician (Labour MP 1974-1986) and occasional author, prominent in the first two roles for a volatility, ambition, party-changing episodes, and a growing Euroscepticism; he has often been lampooned in the media. His sf novel, The Ceremony of Innocence: A Novel of 1984 (1983), set in the very Near Future, reflects these tendencies and convictions. [JC]
Robinson, Roger
(1943- ) UK computer programmer, bibliographer and publisher, active in UK Fandom for many years. The Writings of Henry Kenneth Bulmer (1983 chap; rev 1984 chap) is an exhaustive Bibliography of one of the most prolific sf writers, Kenneth Bulmer, and Who's Hugh?: An SF Reader's Guide to Pseudonyms (1987) is similarly exhaustive in its ...