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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. ...
Eliminators
Film (1986). Altar/Empire. Produced by Charles Band. Directed by Peter Manoogian. Written by Paul DeMeo, Danny Bilson. Cast includes Denise Crosby, Roy Dotrice, Conan Lee, Andrew Prine and Patrick Reynolds. 96 minutes, cut to 91 minutes. Colour. / Enjoyable exploitation frolic whose plot defies precis, but involves a Mad Scientist (Dotrice) – who wants to become a Roman emperor – lurking in the jungle with ...
McCarthy, Wil
Working name of US engineer and author William Terence McCarthy (1966- ) who began publishing sf with "What I Did with the OTV Grissom" for Aboriginal in May/June 1990; his first book appearance was the very thin chapbook Dirtyside Down (1991 chap dos). In his first novel, Aggressor Six (1994), which begins the two-volume Waisters sequence concluding with The Fall of Sirius (1996), ...
Rostand, Maurice
(1891-1968) French playwright and author of marginal sf interest for Le Cercueil de Cristal (1920; trans Alys Eyre Macklin as The Crystal Coffin 1922), whose protagonist is seemingly possessed (see Decadence; Identity Transfer) by a Svengali-like mentor. [JC]
Johnson, Samuel
(1709-1784) UK poet, critic, playwright, lexicographer and author of one novel, The Prince of Abissinia: A Tale (1759; rev 1759; vt The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia: An Asiatic Tale 1768; vt The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia: A Tale 1787), written to pay for his mother's funeral (he got £100 – a large sum – for the first printing). The profusion of vts above comes from our normal practice of citing title ...
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 ...