SF Encyclopedia Home Page
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.
Site updated on 16 June 2025
Sponsor of the day: Conversation 2023
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. ...
Talentless Nana
Japanese animated tv series (2020). Original title Munō na Nana. Based on the Manga by Looseboy and Iori Furuya. Bridge. Directed by Shinji Ishihira. Written by Fumihiko Shimo. Voice cast includes Mai Nakahara, Yuichi Nakamura, Rumi Ookubo, Hiro Shimono, Yoshitaka Yamaya and Kouji Yusa. Thirteen 24-minute episodes. Colour. / Fifty years ago the appearance of the Enemies of Humanity – ...
Hyde, Christopher
(1949- ) Canadian television interviewer and author, generally of Technothrillers, beginning with The Wave (1979) and continuing with titles like The Icarus Seal (1982) and Crestwood Heights (1988), the eponymous village under siege in the latter tale evoking Stephen King, Ira Levin's The Stepford Wives (1974), and even ...
Pollack, Rachel
(1945-2023) US author, resident in the Netherlands 1973-1990, subsequently in America, who began to publish work of genre interest with "Pandora's Bust" as by Richard A Pollack in New Worlds Quarterly 2 (anth 1971 ) edited by Michael Moorcock (see also New Worlds). Her focus as a teller of tales moved steadily away from Genre SF, though her first novel, Golden Vanity ...
Vonnegut, Kurt, Jr
(1922-2007) US author, who signed his name simply Kurt Vonnegut (without the Jr) after 1976. He was a Prisoner of War near the end of World War Two in Dresden from December 1944 to May 1945, surviving the saturation bombing of the city and the subsequent firestorm, basing his most successful novel Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) [see below] on his experience; he was awarded a Purple Heart on his return to America, normally given to those wounded in ...
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 ...