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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. ...
Winslow, Helen M
(1851-1938) US author, much of whose work advocates a moderate Feminism in which the central focus seems to be on equality of opportunity between the sexes, as in the nonfantastic A Woman for Mayor: A Novel of To-Day (1909), whose victorious female mayor is much interested in hygiene, and has the city scrubbed clean. Of sf interest is the Near Future Salome Shepard, Reformer (1893), the eponymous ...
Reed, Douglas
(1895-1976) UK author, in active service as a fighter pilot in World War One, in South Africa from 1947. He was initially best known for such controversial political/cultural studies as Insanity Fair (1938); the essays on World War Two assembled in All Our Tomorrows (coll 1942) culminate in a vision of Hermann Goering in 1979. In his sf novel, The Next Horizon (1945; vt ...
Mephisto Waltz, The
Film (1971). 20th Century Fox. Directed by Paul Wendkos. Written by Ben Maddow from the novel The Mephisto Waltz (1969) by Fred Mustard Stewart. Cast includes Alan Alda, Jacqueline Bisset, Pamelyn Ferdin, Curt Jürgens, Barbara Parkins and Kathleen Widdoes. 115 minutes. Colour. / A woman uses Magic to inhabit the body of a rival after a similar Identity Transfer ...
Wayne, Jeff
(1943- ) US composer and musician, best known for his lengthy concept-album adaptation of H G Wells's The War of the Worlds (April-December 1897 Pearson's; 1898), released as Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of The War of the Worlds (1978). This work, narrated rather grumpily by Richard Burton, retells the whole of Wells's story through songs sung by David Essex, Justin Hayward (of ...
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 ...