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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. ...
2000 Plus
US Radio series (1950-1952; vt 2000+; vt Two Thousand Plus). Created by Sherman H Dryer (1913-1989) for the Mutual Broadcasting System. Produced by Robert Weenolsen (1900-1979). Written by Dryer and Weenolsen. Announcer: Ken Marvin. Uncertain number of 30-minute episodes. Perhaps 100 instalments were produced; 32 are known to have survived. / This may have been the first US adult sf Radio drama anthology series, ...
Hughes, Zach
Working name for much of his sf of US author Hugh Zachary (1928-2016), who also used various other pseudonyms for sf, including Evan Innes, Peter Kanto, Pablo Kane and Marcus Van Heller; he used his real name for other work from 1961 on, at least 100 titles in all. His novels in the sf field were expertly devised and readable and frequently surprisingly dark in their implications. The Book of Rack the Healer (July/August-September/October 1972 If; 1973) and ...
Rottensteiner, Franz
(1942- ) Austrian sf critic, editor and literary agent; he has a PhD from the University of Vienna. He has edited the SF of the World series for Insel Verlag, the Fantastic Novels series for Paul Zsolnay Verlag, and the Fantastic Library series – now over 250 volumes – for Suhrkamp Verlag. He writes in English as well as in German, his critical articles having appeared in ...
Ketterer, David
(1942- ) UK academic and author (with a DPhil from the University of Sussex); based for many years at Concordia University, Montreal; now in the UK. His New Worlds for Old: The Apocalyptic Imagination, Science Fiction, and American Literature (1974) interestingly, though utilizing a rather academic terminology, links apocalyptic themes in US Mainstream literature with similar obsessions in ...
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 ...