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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. ...
Shelton, Frederick William
(1814/1815-1881) US minister and author whose first book, The Trollopiad; Or, Travelling Gentleman in America (1837) as by Nil Admirari, Esq, is an essentially nonfantastic verse Satire on Frances Trollope (1780-1863). Of very moderate sf interest is Salander and the Dragon: A Romance of the Hartz Prison (1850), a Lost Race tale unduly reminiscent of John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress (1678). ...
Mathematics
The imaginations of pure mathematicians have provided sf writers with important motifs. For example, the notions taken from geometry and topology of a fourth and other Dimensions (which see for a listing of relevant sf stories) have the essential qualities of strangeness and mystery, making them an enjoyable struggle for the untrained intuition to accept. A surprising number of sf writers have been mathematicians, or at least have trained in mathematics; among ...
Anderson, Ros
(? - ) UK dancer, journalist and author whose first novel, The Hierarchies (2020), is narrated by an AI named Sylv.ie (which is to say Sylv Intelligence Embodied), whose sole function as a Sex doll physically indistinguishable from humans is to satisfy the ravenous needs of human males. Sylv.ie's growth in self-awareness leads her away from her human owner into a ...
DiSilvestro, Roger L
(1949- ) US author whose first novel of genre interest was Ursula's Gift (1988), a humorous fantasy. His second, Living with the Reptiles (1990), spoofs the ethical tomfooleries of that form of the Time-Travel tale in which the protagonist changes history to save/destroy/play with the future. In this case the protagonists, after acquiring the necessary equipment in what remains of the Amazon jungle, pass into the ...
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 ...