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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. ...
Davy, Humphry
(1778-1829) English scientist and author famous for inventing the miner's safety-lamp in 1815; knighted 1812, baronet 1818, President of the Royal Society 1820. In his youth he was an acquaintance of the romantic poets of the day: a friend of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, he helped correct the proofs of Coleridge's and William Wordsworth's Lyrical Ballads (coll 1798), and some of his own poems were included in an anthology edited by Robert Southey. His last work, ...
Mysterious Stranger
John Gardner has been credited for claiming that there are only two plots: journey and arrival; it may be added that the stranger who comes to town may well be returning. Though some examples of the two main plots are different aspects of a single story (perhaps most are; see discussion of The Odyssey below), this entry focuses on the second primal tale. The first Mysterious Stranger in the traditional Western Canon may be the Serpent in the ...
Dixie, Florence
(1855-1905) UK traveller, journalist (the first female war correspondent in the English language) and author whose nonfiction Across Patagonia: A Lady Combs the Pampas (1880) – the only woman in her party, she was its dominant figure – captures something of her Feminist urgency. In Gloriana, or The Revolution of 1900 (1890) a woman disguised as a man is elected Prime Minister of the UK and, though unmasked, establishes full ...
Biss, Gerald
(1876-1922) UK journalist with a particular interest in motoring or "automobilism" (his coinage), and a prolific author, active from 1901 or earlier; he began to publish of serial stories syndicated in many newspapers worldwide, five of which subsequently appeared as hardback thriller novels. The earliest known serialization venues are given here but may not be reliable. Biss's second novel The White Rose Mystery (1904 Falkirk Herald as "The White Rose"; 1907) is arguably ...
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 ...