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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. ...
Kelly, Shane
(?1956-?1986) US author of The Hidden City (1980) in which Sex and other shenanigans are uncovered Under the Sea in a Lost World beneath the Bermuda Triangle. [JC]
Burton, Tim
(1958- ) US filmmaker, resident in the UK since 2002, all of whose films have been fantasy of one kind or another. An animator by background who has intermittently returned to the medium, Burton made his live-action debut on Pee-Wee's Big Adventure (1985) and had a surprise hit with his second feature Beetlejuice (1988), which landed him the high-stakes job of directing Warner's prize project Batman. A major success, it led to three ...
Elze, Winifred
(? - ) US author of two novels which apply horror tonalities – though nothing like the fixation on the unveiling of the previously given typical of genuine horror – to sf material: in The Changeling (1995), what might be called an Ecological revolt against humanity rises amongst the flora of the planet; and in Here, Kitty, Kitty (1996), a suburban Polder [see The ...
Sinclair, Iain
(1943- ) UK bookseller (retired), poet and author whose fiction is better described as Fantastika than as sf proper, just as the work of his main American mentor, William S Burroughs can be so designated. Studies and mythopoetic explorations of London, comprising a large body of fiction and nonfiction, have provided Sinclair with a central focus from the beginning of his ...
Langford, David
(1953- ) UK author, critic, editor, publisher and sf fan, in the latter capacity recipient of 21 Hugo awards for fan writing – some of the best of his several hundred pieces are assembled as Let's Hear It for the Deaf Man (coll 1992 chap US; much exp vt The Silence of the Langford 1996; exp 2015 ebook) as Dave Langford, edited by Ben Yalow – plus five Best Fanzine Hugos ...