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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. ...
Hassler, Kenneth W
(1932-1999) US personnel specialist and author whose routine sf novels, most of them Space Operas, are The Glass Cage (1969), Destination: Terra (1970), The Dream Squad (1970), A Message from Earth (1970), Intergalac Agent (1971) and The Multiple Man (1972). [JC]
Lathrop, George Parsons
(1851-1898) Hawaiian-born author, in US from childhood; his nonfiction appreciation of his father-in-law Nathaniel Hawthorne, A Study of Hawthorne (1876), and his editing of editions of Hawthorne's work, was perhaps intensified by his marriage to the author's daughter in 1871. Lathrop is of sf interest for "In the Deep of Time" (13 December 1896-3 January 1897 The Morning Times), a novella-length tale written "in Collaboration with ...
Bailey, Thomas
Pseudonym of US author Edward Bellamy Partridge (1877-1960), who wrote Country Lawyer (1939) under his full name, also publishing work as Bellamy Partridge and Bailey. In his Lost Race novel, Long Night (1935), a young woman, lost in the Arctic, is taken by the Inuit chief who rescues her to a mysterious Island where she finds a Viking still alive. The Viking and the Inuit fight over her. [JC]
Marley, Stephen
(1946- ) UK author who began to publish work of genre interest with Spirit Mirror (1988), opening the Chia Black Dragon trio of dark fantasies set in old China. Of direct sf interest are his Ties to the Comics universe of Judge Dredd, these being Judge Dredd: Dreddlocked (1993) and Judge Dredd: Dread Dominion (1994). Another tie, to the ...
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 ...