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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. ...
Payn, James
(1830-1898) UK author and editor whose 100+ books cover a wide variety of genres, his sf being comparatively inconspicuous. The Cruise of the Anti-Torpedo (1871 chap) anonymous is a typical Future-War tale, one of many written in direct response to George T Chesney's The Battle of Dorking (May 1871 Blackwood's Magazine; 1871 chap) (see ...
Hatton, Joseph
(1837-1907) UK journalist and author, active from 1861 in a variety of modes; of genre interest is The Park Lane Mystery: A Story of Love and Magic (1887), which contains supernatural elements, and The White King of Manoa (1890; vt The White King of Manoa: An Anglo-Spanish Romance 1899), a Lost Race romance in which a member of Sir Walter Raleigh's expedition to the Orinoco discovers an Incan land, in whose capital, the ...
Dank, Milton
(1920-2019) US historian, physicist and author, often on military matters, who collaborated with his daughter, Gloria Rand Dank [whom see for details], on the Galaxy Gang sequence for Young Adult readers. [JC]
Clark, Thomas March
(1812-1903) US cleric (he was the fifth Episcopal Bishop of Rhode Island) and author of the Young Adult tale, John Whopper, the Newsboy (July-October 1870 Old and New; 1871) as Anonymous, in which the eponymous newspaper delivery boy falls through a hole into the Hollow Earth eventually reaching China. En route he visits the North Pole. [JC]
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 ...