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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. ...
McDonald, Raymond
Joint pseudonym of Canadian author Raymond Alfred Léger (1884-1934) and Canadian lawyer, politician, inventor and writer Edward Richard McDonald (1871-1952), whose sf novel, The Mad Scientist: A Tale of the Future (1908), features the increasingly dangerous – or effective – interventions of the eponymous Mad Scientist in the dealings of US businessmen and of the US Government itself. The scientist's inclinations are socialist ...
Top o Nerae
["Aim for the Top"]. Animated video series (1988 Japan; vt Gunbuster, 1990 US). Gainax, Bandai Emotion. Directed by Hideaki Anno. Written by Hideaki Anno and Toshio Okada. Cast includes Noriko Hidaka, Maria Kawamura, Rei Sakuma and Norio Wakamoto. 180 minutes (6 x 30 minutes). Five episodes colour, last episode mainly black and white. / A Future War Anime in which the teenage Noriko ...
Astounding Stories Yearbook
One of the many reprint Digest magazines published by Sol Cohen's Ultimate Publishing Co, reprinting material from Amazing Stories from the 1930s and 1940s. Two issues were released in 1970, the second under the title Astounding SF. Cohen's use of such a celebrated magazine title (see Astounding) was thought by fans to be cheeky. [BS/PN/MA] links / ...
Holmberg, John-Henri
(1949- ) Swedish editor, translator and critic. An sf reader since the age of six, Holmberg became active in Swedish fandom at thirteen, during the following 25 years publishing some 300 issues of Fanzines, chairing sf clubs and several Conventions and in 1977 starting the first sf bookstore in Sweden. For his fan activities, he received the international Big Heart ...
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 ...