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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. ...
Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith
Film (2005). A Lucasfilm Ltd Production, a Twentieth Century Fox release. Directed by George Lucas. Written by Lucas. Cast includes Hayden Christensen, Samuel L Jackson, Ian McDiarmid, Ewan McGregor and Natalie Portman. 140 minutes. Colour. / In Revenge of the Sith, the (apparently) final film in the Star Wars cycle, George Lucas finally packs away the cute sidekicks to dramatize the darkest moment in ...
Lunatic, Sir Humphry
Pseudonym used by Irish actor, critic, playwright and author Francis Gentleman (1728-1784), whose working years were spent mostly in England, for a Proto SF imitation – and perhaps conscious Parody of – the Fantastic Voyage as found in the work of Cyrano de Bergerac and others; the tale, ...
Brooks, Walter R
(1886-1958) US journalist and author, active from 1915, publishing at least 200 stories by 1944, and including a nonfiction stint with the New Yorker 1932-1933. His most obvious success during these years was the Mr Ed sequence of twenty-three tales about a talking horse and his drunken owner, beginning with "The Talking Horse" (18 September 1937 Liberty), some of them assembled as The Original Mr Ed (coll 1963); the Television ...
Norfolk, Lawrence
(1963- ) UK author whose first novel, Lemprière's Dictionary (1991; cut 1992) is an elaborate secret history set in the late eighteenth century, depicting vast Automata from the Steampunk toolkit and sinister immortals (see Immortality) under a phantasmagoric London, murders that involve the re-enactment of classical myth, ...
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 ...