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Saturday 21 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. ...
McIvor, Allan
Pseudonym of the unidentified author (? -? ) of The Overlord: The Story of the Peons of Canada (1904), a Near Future depiction of the American Invasion of Canada at the behest of the eponymous railroad magnate, who establishes a dictatorship. The upcoming business magnate protagonist of The Mechanic (1906) powers his rise initially through an ...
Clair, René
Pseudonym of French filmmaker and author René-Lucien Chomette (1898-1981) whose first feature film, Paris qui Dort (1924), is of sf interest; though many of his subsequent movies, in France, the UK and America, were of fantasy interest, their immersion in the coils of Fantastika defaulted to the unargued and the oneiric. A partial exception is It Happened Tomorrow ...
Copeland, Leland S
(1886-1973) US amateur astronomer and poet, a longtime contributor to Sky and Telescope magazine who is sometimes noted for his minor contributions to the field of astronomy. He merits a modicum of attention as the first poet (see Poetry) to have his works appear in an SF Magazine, as editor Hugo Gernsback published nineteen of his poems in Amazing Stories and ...
Reiffel, Leonard
(1927-2017) US physicist, broadcaster, noted for his competent and accessible radio programme The World Tomorrow which began in 1964, Deputy Director of the Apollo Moon project for NASA 1965-1969, and author; in his Near Future Technothriller, The Contaminant (1978), a plot is brewed to destroy the USSR with a virus that causes cancer (see Pandemic). [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 ...