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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. ...
Frankowski, Leo A
(1943-2008) US author known principally for his Alternate-History series, the Adventures of Conrad Stargard: The Cross-Time Engineer (1986), The High-Tech Knight (1989) and The Radiant Warrior (1989), all three assembled as Conrad Stargard: The Radiant Warrior (omni 2004); plus The Flying Warlord (1989), Lord Conrad's Lady (1990) and Conrad's Quest for Rubber ...
Dream Hacking
Term used in this encyclopedia for the now frequent sf trope in which entry is made into someone's personal dreams or mental landscape (as though this literal Inner Space were a physical geography or Pocket Universe) to study or influence the contents. This has long been imagined as an intriguing technique of future Psychology. / A pioneering sf example is Peter ...
Worlds in Balance
Settings created for sf Games have some unique characteristics not shared with other science-fictional worlds. Most importantly, a gameworld must be balanced, meaning that opposing forces must be of approximately equal capabilities. While this may also be a requirement for an entertaining adventure story, in which the protagonist is engaged in conflict with a reasonable chance of either victory or defeat, games are much more demanding in this regard. Characters in ...
Coven 13
US fantasy magazine, Digest-size for the first four issues, then letter-size for the remaining six issues; ten issues from September 1969 to (undated) 1974, #1-#4 published bimonthly by Camelot Publishing, Los Angeles, September 1969 to March 1970, edited by Arthur H Landis; #5-#10 published irregularly by William L Crawford's Fantasy Publishing, California, edited by Gerald Page. From #5 ...
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 ...