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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. ...
Ertz, Susan
(1887-1985) UK author of popular novels, very probably pseudonymous, active for much of the century and perhaps now most famous for one quote from her novel Anger in the Sky (1943): "Millions long for immortality who don't know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon." Her Scientific Romance, Woman Alive (1935), borrows wholesale from John Buchan's The Gap in the Curtain ...
Laserblast
Film (1978). Irwin Yablans. Produced by Charles Band. Directed by Michael Rae. Written by Franne Schacht, Frank Ray Perilli. Cast includes Kim Milford, Gianni Russo and Cheryl Smith. 80 minutes. Colour. / In this ill-made, low-budget exploitation movie a miserable teenager finds in the desert an amulet and a laser left by Aliens. The amulet makes his eyes glow red; taken over by the alien persona, he revenges himself with ...
Gallego, S G
(1883-1944) Spanish-born author, in US from an undetermined point; John Smith, Emperor (1944) is a Near Future tale whose culture-Hero protagonist uses his Invention of a secret device to impose peace on the world, and to institute a Utopia where anything that the protagonist considers immoral (Sex is particularly offensive to him) is made ...
Wood, Mrs J
Pseudonym of US journalist, editor and author William Mill Butler (1857-1946); in his anti-Feminist Dystopia, Pantaletta: A Romance of Sheheland (1882) as by Mrs J Wood, the narrator, Icarus Byron Gullible (see Gulliver), having traveled to the North Pole in an Airship of his own Invention, discovers a ...
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 ...