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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.
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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. ...
McIntosh, J T
Pseudonym of Scottish author and journalist James Murdoch MacGregor (1925-2008), used for all his sf writing excepting one story as by H J Murdoch for Science Fantasy; in some early work the surname was spelled M'Intosh. He also wrote non-sf under his own name. He began publishing sf with "The Curfew Tolls" in Astounding in December 1950, producing many stories (though no collections) through 1980. With his first novel, ...
Zajac, Gord
(? - ) Canadian screenwriter and author who began publishing work of genre interest with "Second Skin" for Challenging Destiny in May 1997. In his gonzo Military SF novel, Major Kamage (2010), set two decades after an unspecified War, an unreconciled veteran of the conflict, and his disbanded cohort, must save the soft new world, which is at peace under debilitating corporate ...
Pedreira, David
(? - ) US journalist and author whose Near Future sf novel Gunpowder Moon (2018) focuses on crises in mining the Moon in 2072, a decade after Climate Change has ruined the home planet. Various partially crippled imperial domains (see Imperialism) survive, including America and China, and continue their savage spats. ...
Tomita
Working name of Isao Tomita (1932-2016), Japanese electronic musician. A pioneer in the popularization of synthesizer composition, Tomita cut his teeth recording electronic versions of famous works from the classical canon – some of these still sound very fresh, not least, his inventively varied rendering of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition (1975) and his brisk version of Stravinsky's Firebird Suite (1975). But, perhaps because the electronic synthesizer ...
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 ...