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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. ...
Jackson, Stuart
(? -2006) UK teacher and author, whose Tracer (1990) depicts a Near Future Britain whose government jails AIDS victims. [JC]
Amazing Stories Quarterly
US letter-size Magazine, companion to Amazing (but twice as thick) and successor to Amazing Stories Annual. 22 issues, Winter 1928-Fall 1934, first under the aegis of Hugo Gernsback's Experimenter Publishing Company and later (1929-1934), edited by T O'Conor Sloane after Gernsback had lost control, under the various ...
Normand, Charles
(? -? ) French author of L'émeraude des Incas (28 November 1891-5 March 1892 Petit France Illustré; 1892; trans S A B Harvey as The Emerald of the Incas: A Story of the Peruvian Empire 1917), in which a brave Peruvian with links to ancient Incas attempts to mount a revolt against his European masters, basing himself and his colleagues in a Lost World deep ...
Orb, The
UK electronic music act, founded by Alex Paterson (1959- ) and Jimmy Cauty (1956- ) and at present (after various personnel changes) comprising Paterson and Swizz-born Thomas Fehlmann (1958- ). The Orb's atmospheric, often playfully evocative, ambient music takes much of its inspiration from science fiction. Their first, and best, album was The Orb's Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld (1991), which maps out its ...
Langford, David
(1953- ) UK author, critic, editor, publisher and sf fan, in the latter capacity recipient of 21 Hugo awards for fan writing – some of the best of his several hundred pieces are assembled as Let's Hear It for the Deaf Man (coll 1992 chap US; much exp vt The Silence of the Langford 1996; exp 2015 ebook) as Dave Langford, edited by Ben Yalow – plus five Best Fanzine Hugos ...