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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. ...
Karta
Pseudonym of Australian author Charles Carter (1871-1951) for his Utopia, The Island of Justice (1901), set on an Island whose teetotal society enjoys a relatively moneyless economy, and electricity-enabled Inventions. [JC]
Benson, A C
Working name for much of his copious magazine output of Arthur Christopher Benson (1862-1925), UK essayist, poet and author, elder brother of E F Benson and Robert Hugh Benson; best known as A C Benson though often his books would give this form of his name on the cover while the full name appeared on the title page; he also wrote as Arthur C Benson and as B. Much of his short fiction was fantasy, and can be found in ...
Miller, Walter M, Jr
(1923-1996) US author who before beginning to publish served in World War Two as a pilot, flying combat missions; he then converted to Catholicism, in 1947. Miller began publishing sf with "Secret of the Death Dome" in Amazing in 1951, and over the ten years of his active writing career released about forty more tales, many of which had a deep impact upon the field. During the 1950s, a time when US sf tended to express its new-found interest in character through ...
Punishment Park
Film (1970). Chartwell/Françoise. Directed by Peter Watkins. Written by Watkins. Cast includes Carmen Argenziano, Stan Armsted, Jim Bohan, Frederick Franklin and Gladys Golden. 89 minutes. Colour. / Set in the Near Future, Punishment Park concerns a group of young political dissidents who are forced to endure a government-controlled "run of the gauntlet" before they can attain amnesty for their political ...
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 ...