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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. ...
Stranger Within, The
Made-for-tv film (1974). Lorimar/ABC TV. Directed by Lee Philips. Teleplay Richard Matheson, based on his "Mother by Protest" (September/October 1953 Fantastic; vt "Trespass" in The Shores of Space, coll 1957). Cast includes David Doyle, Barbara Eden, George Grizzard and Joyce Van Patten. 72 minutes. Colour. / A woman (Eden) becomes pregnant – inexplicably, as her husband (Grizzard) is certified to ...
Toner, Tom
(1986- ) UK author whose Amaranthine Spectrum sequence, comprising The Promise of the Child (2015), The Weight of the World (2017) and The Tropic of Eternity (2018), is a late but not unwelcome addition to the canon of the Widescreen Baroque Space Opera, with all the conventions typical of such a tale set in an interstellar arena, but conveyed with ...
Wu Yan
(1962- ) Chinese author, Beijing-born but of Manchu ethnicity, whose education encompassed psychology and a management PhD, and whose work includes the teaching of science fiction at Beijing Normal University. His first story, "Adventure in an Iceberg" (1978 Shaonian Kexue), was published when he was only 16, establishing him as an author before the academic career that truly supported him. Wu Yan has often appeared in ...
Space Children, The
Film (1958). Paramount. Directed by Jack Arnold. Written by Bernard C Schoenfeld, from a story by Tom Filer. Cast includes Jackie Coogan, Johnny Crawford, Michel Ray, Peggy Webber and Adam Williams. 69 minutes. Black and white. / This was the last of Arnold's cycle of sf films with producer William Alland, though here the studio is Paramount, not Universal. In this earnest but likeable moral fable, a group of children are "taken over" by a benign ...
Langford, David
(1953- ) UK author, critic, editor, publisher and sf fan, in the latter capacity recipient of 21 Hugo awards for fan writing – some of the best of his several hundred pieces are assembled as Let's Hear It for the Deaf Man (coll 1992 chap US; much exp vt The Silence of the Langford 1996; exp 2015 ebook) as Dave Langford, edited by Ben Yalow – plus five Best Fanzine Hugos ...