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Sunday 22 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. ...
Delacorte, Peter
(1943- ) US author whose sf novel, Time on My Hands (1997), carries its protagonist back to 1938 Hollywood (see California; Time Travel) with the mission to do anything in his power that will prevent Ronald Reagan from eventually becoming President of the United States; unfortunately for his mission (though fortunately for Reagan, who turns out to be highly likeable), the protagonist's journeys ...
Invisible Avenger, The
Japanese film (1954). Original title Tomei Ningen; vt The Invisible Man. Toho. Directed by Motoyoshi Oda. Written by Shigeaki Hidaka. Special effects by Eiji Tsuburaya. Cast includes Seizaburo Kawazu, Minoru Takada and Yoshio Tsuchiya. 70 minutes. Black and white. / During World War Two, Japanese Scientists secretly created a troop of invisible ...
Dold, Douglas
(1888-1931) US editor and author, elder brother of Elliott Dold, with whom in 1915 he joined the Serbian army. As a result of injuries sustained in combat, he gradually became blind, but this affliction did not prevent him from editing The Danger Trail magazine, presiding over Clues, Incorporated (which published Clues: A Magazine of Detective Stories), or publishing several borderline sf/adventure tales. The last of these appears to have been ...
Wood, George
(1799-1870) US government official in the Treasury Department and author; his Peter Schlemihl in America (1848) anonymous is derived from Peter Schlemihls wundersame Geschichte ["Peter Schlemihl's Miraculous Story"] (1814; trans J Bowring as Peter Schlemihl 1824) by Adalbert Von Chamisso (1781-1838), a supernatural fantasy whose protagonist, having sold his shadow to the Devil, wanders the world in search of wisdom and knowledge, aided in his travels by ...
Clute, John
(1940- ) Canadian critic, editor and author, in the UK from 1969; married to Judith Clute from 1964, partner of Elizabeth Hand since 1996. He began to publish work of genre interest with an sf-tinged poem "Carcajou Lament" in Triquarterly for Winter 1960 [ie Autumn 1959]; he began consistently publishing sf reviews in his "New Fiction" column for the Toronto Star (1966-1967), and later in ...