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Friday 20 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. ...
Cabet, Étienne
(1788-1856) French lawyer, philosopher, utopian socialist and author, best known for the narrative Utopia, Voyage et Aventures de Lord Villiam Carisdall en Icarie (1839 2vols; vt Voyage en Icarie: roman philosophique et social 1842; trans Leslie J Roberts as Travels in Icaria 2003) [for more details see Checklist below]. The eponymous Lord Carisdall, a member of the British nobility, travels by ship (the journey takes four ...
Groc, Léon
(1882-1956) French author of many sf novels, of which only one, L'autobus évanoui (1914; trans Lawrence Shackelford Morris as The Bus That Vanished 1928), has been translated into English; it is a mystery novel involving an energy Ray which causes the eponymous vanishment. [JC]
Watson, Robert
(1882-1948) Scottish-born screenwriter, editor and author, in Canada from 1908, moving to California in 1933 to continue his cinema work. Of his several romantic adventures, High Hazard: A Romance of the Far Arctic (1929) is a Lost World tale featuring a clement enclave in the far north, where creatures out of Prehistoric SF roam, along with giants. [JC]
Little Green Men
Jocular item of Terminology, seemingly derived from its use to describe fairies but more widely employed in sf to denote generic Aliens – most often from Mars, as widely popularized in 1940s and 1950s newspaper stories about UFOs. The titular phrase is repeated many times in the poem "The Little Green Man: A German Story" (1801) by Matthew Lewis [see The ...
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 ...