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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. ...
Greenleaf, Sue
(? -? ) US author and Feminist who, given the setting of her only sf novel, has been identified as the Sue Greenleaf who was based in Fort Worth, Texas, and Saltillo, Mexico, and eventually in San Francisco. A copy of Liquid from the Sun's Rays (1901; vt Don Miguel Lehumada, Discoverer of the Liquid from the Sun's Rays 1906) is subtitled, possibly in the author's hand, «A Romance in Future Mexico ...
Starobinets, Anna
(1978- ) Russian journalist and author whose short fiction in particular has become well known, beginning with the tales assembled in Perekhodnyj vozrast ["Awkward Age"] (coll 2005; trans Hugh Aplin as An Awkward Age 2010), in which an adroit play with Horror in SF tropes caused her very soon to be likened to Stephen King. The tales assembled in ...
Gurdon, J E
(1898-1973) UK soldier – as a World War One flying ace he won a DFC – and author, publishing many stories in UK magazines, and two books of some sf interest: Feeding the Wind (1924), featuring a Mad Scientist who almost blows up the world; and a Lost World tale for Young Adult readers, The Secret of the South (1950), featuring a ...
Ferrigno, Robert
(1947- ) US author, most of whose novels have been thrillers, beginning with The Horse Latitudes (1990). He began to publish work of sf interest with "Perfect Lover" in Beyond #17 in 1990. The sf Assassin trilogy, beginning with Prayers for the Assassin (2006), is set in the Near Future America of 2040, whose balkanization has been triggered by terror attacks which have destroyed ...
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 ...