SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Wednesday 18 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. ...
Silberstang, Edwin
(1930-2012) US lawyer and author, mostly of nonfiction books on gambling techniques; of sf interest is Sweet Land of Liberty (1972), a Near Future Political thriller in which the daughter of the American president after Richard Nixon is kidnapped, and treated very roughly. [JC]
Brown, John Young
(1856-1921) US educator and author. The protagonist of his sf novel, To the Moon and Back in Ninety Days: A Thrilling Narrative of Blended Science and Adventure (1922), hitches a ride on a Spaceship powered by Antigravity device to the Moon. The discovery of Selenites there turns out to be a hoax but the trip was real. The posthumous publication of the tale was arranged by residents of the ...
Anarchy Online
Videogame (2001). Funcom. Designed by Gaute Godager, Ragnar Tørnquist. Platforms: Win. / Anarchy Online is a Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game which could be characterized as a form of shared Planetary Romance. It is set on the far future world of Rubi-Ka, where the morally suspect hypercorporation Omni-Tek is mining notum, ...
Price, Lissa
(? - ) US author of a Young Adult Dystopia, Starters (2012), set in a Near Future America devastated by a "genocide spore" that has killed off anyone not vaccinated; as only children and old people were vaccinated in time, the survivors occupy a world whose operational heart has been evacuated. Teenagers are induced to rent their bodies for short ...
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 ...