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Thursday 19 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.
Site updated on 16 June 2025
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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. ...
NOW Comics
US Comics publisher active from 1985 to 2005, also variously known as NOW Entertainment Corporation and NOW Media Group Incorporated. Founded by Tony C Caputo. / An independent publisher which was successful for some years, NOW Comics published many licensed titles based on such genre properties as the films Ghostbusters (1984) and Fright Night (1985), and the Television series The ...
Penrose, Roger
(1931- ) UK mathematical physicist, Emeritus Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford, who has achieved much significant work in his field. Occasional forays into recreational Mathematics include the creation, with his geneticist father Lionel Penrose (1898-1972), of the impossible ever-ascending or ever-descending Penrose staircase described in their paper "Impossible Objects: A Special Type of Visual Illusion" ...
Stevens, David
(1937- ) UK author of Sunset and Morning Star (1976), a Satire for the Young Adult market; the tale is set on a strange planet where a modified topsy-turvydom operates, with the fattest person on the planet being elected its ruler, and "thins" treated as slaves. [JC]
Stone, Tamara Ireland
(? - ) US marketing executive and author whose Young Adult Time Between Us sequence beginning with Time Between Us (2012) casts two young people together, the one from 2012 using his Time Travel skills to meet the other in 1995; their budding romance is fraught with difficulties. [JC]
Langford, David
(1953- ) UK author, critic, editor, publisher and sf fan, in the latter capacity recipient of 21 Hugo awards for fan writing – some of the best of his several hundred pieces are assembled as Let's Hear It for the Deaf Man (coll 1992 chap US; much exp vt The Silence of the Langford 1996; exp 2015 ebook) as Dave Langford, edited by Ben Yalow – plus five Best Fanzine Hugos ...