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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. ...
Doré, Gustave
(1832-1883) French painter and illustrator, far more successful in the latter capacity, as he was clearly inspired to do his best work by pre-existing texts, many of them fantastic; as a satirist he was also highly successful, though his targets were local (ie mid-nineteenth century France) and are relatively difficult to appreciate by a contemporary audience. At the same time, the constantly fantasticated exorbitance of his caricatures and other popular drawings underpins his more sustained ...
Williams, Lynda
(1958- ) Canadian author most of whose work is set in the Okal Rel Universe, intentionally created as a Shared World of future interstellar conflict between rival cultures whose roots lie in Earth's past Colonization of Other Worlds, with a touch of Medieval Futurism in its ruling Houses, princes and empires. The first-published volume ...
Renegade Legion
Cardboard models based Wargame series (from 1987). FASA. Designed by Sam Lewis, Jordan Weisman. / Renegade Legion is set in the sixty-ninth century, when the Terran Overlord Government (TOG), a human Galactic Empire deliberately modelled on Imperial Rome, oppresses the galaxy. Its only significant opponents are the egalitarian Commonwealth and its allies, the eponymous Legions, who have defected from the TOG. The milieu ...
Destination Inner Space
Film (1966). United Pictures/Harold Goldman/Magna. Directed by Francis Lynch. Written by Arthur C Pierce. Cast includes Scott Brady, Gary Merrill, Sheree North and Mike Road. 83 minutes. Colour. / This minuscule-budget sf film is set in a research station Under the Sea whose Scientists discover a sunken Alien Spaceship and are menaced by its freed occupant, an ...
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 ...