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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.
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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. ...
Kearney, Susan
(1955- ) US author, usually of paranormal romances like the Pendragon Legacy [for titles see Checklist], though some of her work – especially the loose unnamed series comprising The Challenge (2005), The Dare (2005) and The Ultimatum (2006) – is amply tinged with sf. In the first of these, a secret agent finds love in the future through Time Travel; in the second, an ...
Wilson, Hardy
(1881-1955) Australian painter, architect and author, most of whose writings espouse visions of Utopia soured by a persistent anti-Semitism, beginning with The Cow Pasture Road (1920). The fictional element in these texts varies from cursory to minimal. His vision of an orientalized ideal home called Celestion, a central glory of the imagined ideal City of Kurrajong, is central to almost all of this work, soaking it in a ...
Fury, The
Film (1978). Frank Yablans Presentations/Twentieth Century Fox. Directed by Brian De Palma. Written by John Farris, based on his The Fury (1976). Cast includes John Cassavetes, Kirk Douglas, Charles Durning, Amy Irving, Fiona Lewis and Andrew Stevens. 118 minutes. Colour. / After his success with Carrie (1976), it seems cynical of director De Palma to have made another film about destructive teenage ...
Phylos the Thibetan
Pseudonym of US author Frederick Spencer Oliver (1866-1899), whose Zailm Numinos sequence – comprising A Dweller on Two Planets; Or, the Dividing of the Way (completed 1886; 1905) and An Earth Dweller's Return (1940) – braces its underlying Occultism [see The Encyclopedia of Fantasy under links below] with some sf elements: the revelation of Atlantis ...
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 ...