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Saturday 21 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. ...
Parliament
UK funk band, created by George Clinton. A dispute over the name prompted Clinton to form another group, Funkadelic, with largely the same membership; but after the dispute was resolved Clinton kept both projects going, with Funkadelic more funk-rock and Parliament more funk-soul in musical style. The band's fourth album, Mothership Connection (1975) introduces the "Mothership of Funk", a very influential ...
Battle for the Planet of the Apes
Film (1973). Apjac/Twentieth Century Fox. Director J Lee Thompson. Written by John William Corrington, Joyce Hooper Corrington, based on a story by Paul Dehn. Cast includes Claude Akins, Lew Ayres, John Huston, Roddy McDowall and Natalie Trundy. USA 93 minutes, UK 86 minutes. Colour. / The fifth and last of the series beginning with Planet of the Apes (to which this is a "prequel") and the most disappointing. ...
Bull, Reina M
(1924-2000) UK artist and book/magazine illustrator whose works were variously signed Sington (her birth surname), Reina, Janine, and RMB. Under the last byline she produced all of her sf work, which comprised four memorable covers in 1951 and 1952, two apiece for Science Fantasy and New Worlds; aside from being stylistically very different from the standard fare of the time, these covers carried a sexual charge that ...
Fodor, Ronald V
(1944-2021) US professor of geology at North Carolina State University and author of much nonfiction [mostly for younger readers and not listed below] as well as a Near Future tale of averted Disaster, Impact! (1979) with G J Taylor, in which a meteor threatens Earth. [JC/DRL]
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 ...