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Saturday 21 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. ...
Crichton, Neil
(1932- ) Canadian photographer and author in whose sf novel, Rerun (1976), a man from 1990 Timeslips fifteen years back into his own life of the mid-1970s, where he gains material wealth but loses his soul. [JC]
Edison, Thomas Alva
(1847-1931) US inventor, entrepreneur and author, credited with numerous Inventions – including the light bulb, the phonograph and significant contributions to the development of the motion picture – for which he received more than 1093 patents. It has been argued that Edison's working practice was to supervise the original work of others, taking corporate credit for them in his own name (a practice which, under various descriptions, remains common in ...
Armentrout, Jennifer L
(1980- ) US author, often of paranormal romance tales for the Young Adult market, though much of her wide output is nonfantastic; she has also written as by J Lynn. She is of sf interest for the Lux Universe sequence beginning with Obsidian (2011), where the default immersion of her stories in teenage romance is heightened through the fact that some of those involved are Mutants with ...
Martin, Ian Kennedy
(1936- ) UK scriptwriter for Television and author, best known for a police procedural series, The Sweeney (1975-1978); brother of Troy Kennedy Martin. What has become his Acteon sequence may have been initiated without a sequel in mind, by The Last Crime (1980) as by John Domatilla, set in a harsh, twenty-first century, Dystopian ...
Robinson, Roger
(1943- ) UK computer programmer, bibliographer and publisher, active in UK Fandom for many years. The Writings of Henry Kenneth Bulmer (1983 chap; rev 1984 chap) is an exhaustive Bibliography of one of the most prolific sf writers, Kenneth Bulmer, and Who's Hugh?: An SF Reader's Guide to Pseudonyms (1987) is similarly exhaustive in its ...