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Thursday 19 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. ...
Gallun, Raymond Z
(1911-1994) US author and technical writer, born and educated in Wisconsin, a considerable traveller in later years. He began publishing sf stories at the age of eighteen in November 1929, with "The Space Dwellers" in Wonder Stories and "The Crystal Ray" in Air Wonder Stories. In the 1930s he made a 1932 contribution to Hugo Gernsback's ...
Symons, J H
(1873-1951) UK author, who also wrote as by Maurice Wolmar; some of his fiction is of sf interest. In The Supreme Mystery (1917), a Scientist sends the spirit of a medium into various past eras, upon which, as a kind of Time Viewer, she reports back. The protagonist later sends her into the future as well. The End of the Marriage Vow (1928) also features a Machine capable of ...
Suburban Commando
Film (1991). New Line Cinema. Directed by Burt Kennedy. Written by Frank Capello. Cast includes Shelley Duvall, Hulk Hogan, Christopher Lloyd and Larry Miller. 90 minutes. Colour. / This modest, affable sf comedy about a large, rough, humanoid Alien (pro wrestling star Hogan) who crashlands on Earth after being temporarily retired as an interstellar righter of wrongs, sets its sights rather low, and does quite well. The primitive but effective humour is in ...
de Timms, Graeme
Probable Pseudonym of an unidentified author (? - ). De Timms's pulp-style paperback sf novels are Three Quarters (1963) and Split (1963), about a medical Disaster. The Australian editions are variously credited to Graeme de Timmes, G D Timms and G D Timmes (vts only are listed below); confusion with the Australian author E V Timms ...
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 ...