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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. ...
Fagan, Jim
(? - ) Australian author of Jules Verne's Rocket to the Moon (1967), which is Tied to the film of the same name (which see): Jules Verne's Rocket to the Moon (1967; vt Those Fantastic Flying Fools US; vt Rocket to the Moon). [JC/DRL]
Wettenhovi-Aspa, Sigurd
(1870-1946) Finnish nationalist philosopher, painter and author, born Sigurd Wetterhoff-Asp; as early as 1910 he had begun to advocate the philological argument that all Indo-European languages have a common Finnish origin via Egypt, which was founded by Finns (see Linguistics); he was almost certainly the first, and perhaps the only, writer to suggest this. Wettenhovi-Aspa is of sf interest for an English-language novel, The Diamondking of Sahara ...
Williamson, Robert H
(? -? ) UK author whose only known novel, The Sweetness of Revenge (1904) is an adventure with sf elements, including the Invention of an advanced Machine; any Near Future implications of the tale, which takes place mostly at sea, are only dubiously to be inferred. [JC]
Lopez, Antony
(? - ) UK author of The Second Coming (1975), a Near Future Dystopia with Religion playing an ambivalent role. [JC]
Nicholls, Peter
(1939-2018) Australian editor and author, primarily a critic and historian of sf through his creation and editing of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction [see below]; resident in the UK 1970-1988, in Australia from 1988; worked as an academic in English literature (1962-1968, 1971-1977), scripted television documentaries, was a Harkness Fellow in Film-making (1968-1970) in the USA, worked as a publisher's editor (1982-1983), often broadcast film and book reviews on BBC Radio from 1974 and ...