SF Encyclopedia Home Page
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.
Site updated on 16 June 2025
Sponsor of the day: Ansible Editions
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. ...
Colander, Valerie Nieman
(1955- ) US newspaper editor, poet and author known mostly for her Young Adult novel, Neena Gathering (1988), set with some effectiveness in a balkanized post-Disaster America, though much that might seem innovative here is borrowed fairly directly from other tales set in what has become a very familiar venue. In this context, the heroine comes of age. The book was reissued under the byline ...
Allen, Steve
(1921-2000) US comedian, composer and author who began to publish work of specific genre interest with "The Public Hating" in Bluebook for January 1955, a tale in which the Psi Powers espoused by J B Rhine, who is named in the text, are oppressively amplified in the form of public executions (see Crime and Punishment). This well-known story – and most of his further tales ...
Lost Planet Airmen
US film (1951). Republic Pictures. Directed by Fred C. Brannon. Written by Royal K Cole and William Lively. Cast includes Mae Clarke, Tristram Coffin, James Craven, I. Stanford Jolley and House Peters, Jr. 65 minutes. Black and white. This was an abridged version of the 12-part (167 minutes in total) Republic Pictures Serial Film King of the Rocket Men (1949), though slightly reworked (see below). / Reporter Glenda Thomas (Clarke) is ...
Hinz, Christopher
(1951- ) US author who made a considerable impact with the Paratwa sequence: Liege-Killer (1987) – which won the Compton Crook/Stephen Tall Memorial Award for Best First Novel – Ash Ock (1989) and The Paratwa (1991). From the first, the sequence gives off a sense of professional polish and hurry, densely packing a wide variety of 1980s adventure-sf ...
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 ...