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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. ...
Nielsen Hayden, Patrick
(1959- ) US editor and anthologist, born Patrick James Hayden; he legally changed his name in 1979 when he married Teresa Nielsen Hayden. With his wife, he has been active in Fandom, producing the Fanzine Izzard from 1982 to 1987. He has been editorially involved with Tor Books full-time from 1988, and in this association won the 2007, ...
Davis, Russell
(1970- ) US author, editor and publisher in many genres whose pseudonyms include David Cian and Christopher Tracy; he has edited a number of anthologies, most in collaboration with Martin H Greenberg. In his sf novel Touchless (2002) the protagonist, whose dead wife is in Cryonic storage, is offered the choice (reminiscent of an episode in ...
Cooke, Arthur
Collaborative pseudonym used on "The Psychological Regulator" (March 1941 Comet) by C M Kornbluth, Robert Lowndes, John B Michel, Elsie Balter (1910-1996) – later Elsie Wollheim – and Donald A Wollheim. [JC] links / ...
Blyton, Enid
(1897-1968) UK author, exclusively for children, and mostly for younger readers; it is estimated that from the beginning of her career in 1922 she may have published as many as 700 separate titles, most of them very short, like the Faraway Tree tales, in which various worlds are accessed entirely by Magic. This vast oeuvre is so overloaded with racist, sexist and class prejudices that most of her titles are more or less unreprintable in their original state. Nor ...
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 ...