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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. ...
Kennedy, Kathryne
(? - ) US author who began to publish work of genre interest with "The Elf Critic" in Alternate Hilarities #3 for 1992. She is the author of several paranormal romance novels and historical fantasies [neither The Elven Lords sequence nor The Relics of Merlin sequence is listed below], and is of sf interest for Beneath the Thirteen Moons (2003) a romantic Planetary Romance set on a ...
Starman
1. Film (1984). Delphi Productions II/Columbia. Directed by John Carpenter. Written by Bruce A Evans, Raynold Gideon (and Dean Riesner, uncredited). Cast includes Karen Allen, Jeff Bridges, Richard Jaeckel and Charles Martin Smith. 115 minutes. Colour. / Carpenter ventured into Spielberg territory in this sweet – possibly saccharine – story of a wide-eyed innocent arriving from space. The ...
Sierra, Javier
Working name of Spanish journalist and author Javier Sierra Albert (1971- ) whose first novel, La dama azul (1998; trans James Graham as The Lady in Blue 2007), presents a conspiracy-drenched rendering of the life of a seventeenth-century nun with the powers of temporal bilocation (see Pseudoscience; Psi Powers; Timeslip) who has appeared to Native ...
Voûte, Emile
(1870-1943) Dutch-born journalist, playwright and author, in the USA most of his life; The Passport (1915), is a Near Future tale set in World War One; during the course of the action an American inventor whose Invention is a gas that ends the war. [JC]
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 ...