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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. ...
Due, Tananarive
(1966- ) US teacher, journalist and author, married to Steven Barnes from 1998; most of her work, like her highly regarded first novel The Between (1995), is fantasy. This may be in part an anti-hegemonic response to the historical dominance of male writers like H P Lovecraft in the creative imagining of the Matter of America in a way that masculinizes ...
Williams, Michael Lindsay
(1940- ) US author who published the two volume Mars sequence comprising Martian Spring (1986) and FTL: Further Than Life (1987), which tackles conflicts between Earth and Mars, and consequent attempts to transcend these ills by gaining rapport with a transplanetary group mind; verve and clarity are lacking. / Williams should not be confused with the Michael Williams involved in various DragonLance ...
Quintet
Film (1979). Lion's Gate/Twentieth Century Fox. Directed by Robert Altman. Written by Frank Barhydt, Altman, Patricia Resnick, from a story by Altman, Lionel Chetwynd, Resnick. Cast includes Bibi Andersson, Brigitte Fossey, Vittorio Gassman, David Langton, Paul Newman, Fernando Rey and Nina Van Pallandt. 118 minutes. Colour. / This strange film, critically crucified on release, is perhaps better than the then-consensus suggested. Newman is the ...
Beware! The Blob
Film (1971; vt Son of Blob; vt The Blob Returns). Jack H Harris Enterprises. Produced by Anthony Harris. Directed by Larry Hagman. Screenplay by Anthony Harris and Jack Woods from a story by Richard Clair and Jack H Harris. Cast includes Godfrey Cambridge, Gwynne Gilford, Richard Walker Jr (credited as Robert Walker) and Richard Webb. 91 minutes. Colour. / Oil pipeline layer Chester Hargis (Cambridge) returns from Alaska to his home town in ...
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 ...