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Friday 20 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. ...
Cardona Peña, Alfredo
(1917-1995) Costa Rican poet, essayist, journalist, academic and author who lived in Mexico from 1938, but who preserved ties with his native country throughout his life. Together with the Chilean Hugo Correa, he could be considered the Latin American version of Ray Bradbury. He began to study arts in San José, Costa Rica, and finished in El Salvador, where he also started working as a ...
Avery, Anne
Pseudonym of US author Anne Holmberg (1938- ), mostly of historical romances under several names, also including Kate Holmes and Anne Woodward. She is of sf interest for several romantic Space Operas, including A Distant Star (1993), in which a colony planet at the end of the Long Night after empire is under observation pending its return to galactic civilization; All's Fair ...
Cunningham, Michael
(1952- ) US author, most prominently of The Hours (1998), a novel about Virginia Woolf which won the Pulitzer Prize and other awards; of sf interest is Specimen Days (2005), which like its famous predecessor has a tripartite structure, in this case three thematically intertwined stories, each set in an almost animate New York, each featuring versions of the same three primal ...
Johnstone, William W
(1938-2004) US author identified as the author of over 170 novels since his first in 1980, a few of these being as by William Mason; titles after circa 2003 were seemingly written in collaboration; after his death, his name may have been used as a House Name, though more recently the Johnstone series were taken over by J A Johnstone, writing either as in collaboration with Johnstone, or solo. Johnstone was initially best known for ...
Clute, John
(1940- ) Canadian critic, editor and author, in the UK from 1969; married to Judith Clute from 1964, partner of Elizabeth Hand since 1996. He began to publish work of genre interest with an sf-tinged poem "Carcajou Lament" in Triquarterly for Winter 1960 [ie Autumn 1959]; he began consistently publishing sf reviews in his "New Fiction" column for the Toronto Star (1966-1967), and later in ...