SF Encyclopedia Home Page
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. ...
Trail of Cthulhu
Role Playing Game (2008). Pelgrane Press. Designed by Kenneth Hite, Robin D Laws. / As the Role Playing Game Call of Cthulhu, based on the Cthulhu Mythos, was named after H P Lovecraft's short story "The Call of Cthulhu" (February 1928 ...
Calvino, Italo
(1923-1985) Italian author, born in Cuba, active from the middle of World War Two, at first with realist works but soon with Gothic, surrealist romances of great vigour and impact, such as Il Visconte dimezzato (1951) and Il Cavaliere inesistente (1959) – translated together by Archibald Colquhoun as The Non-Existent Knight and The Cloven Viscount (omni 1962) – and Il Barone rampante (1957; trans ...
Thirteenth Floor, The
Film (1999). Columbia Pictures presents a Centropolis Entertainment Production. Directed by Josef Rusnak. Written by Rusnak & Ravel Centeno-Rodriguez, based on Simulacron-3 (1964) by Daniel F Galouye. Cast includes Craig Bierko, Vincent d'Onofrio, Dennis Haysbert, Gretchen Mol and Armin Mueller-Stahl. 100 minutes. Colour. / The programmers of a Virtual Reality simulation of 1937 Los Angeles ...
Inoue Hisashi
(1934-2010) Japanese playwright and author with an oddly wide-ranging resumé that touched, briefly and powerfully, on the sf genre. Sent to a Catholic boarding school after his father's death, Inoue was baptised as a Christian and switched majors at Sophia University from German to French. / Already writing and producing his own plays at the time of his graduation, he paid the bills with scripts, beginning with the Radio play ...
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 ...