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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. ...
Komroff, Manuel
(1890-1974) US author of I, the Tiger (1933), a tale Equipoisal between fantasy and sf: the narration, from the point-of-view of a caged tiger, is fantasy; the Hollywood frame (see California), in which a "superfilm" is exorbitantly described, pushes some elements of Satire beyond the mundane. [JC]
Trollope, Anthony
(1815-1882) UK author whose most famous novels make up the Barchester Chronicles, and whose portrayal of the state of England was more voluminously expressed, and perhaps more exact, than any other novelist's of stature before or since his time; his posthumous nonfiction study, The New Zealander (written 1855-1856; 1972), was designed to stave off for as long as possible the fate of England promulgated by Lord Macaulay through his famous 1840 image of a future ...
New Moon Quarterly
UK low-paying Amateur Magazine published by Weller Publications, Orpington, Kent and edited by George P Townsend, ostensibly as a fantasy and more experimental companion to Dream Magazine. It saw five, octavo-size issues between June 1987 and Summer 1988. The magazine ran a sizable quota of science fiction amongst its more overt fantasy and occasional light-hearted vignettes. "Blind is the Hand That Fears No Life" (June ...
Man from Atlantis, The
US tv series (1977-1978). Solow Productions for NBC TV. Created by Lee Katzin (who also directed the first episode). Special effects by Tom Fisher. Cast includes Victor Buono, Patrick Duffy and Belinda J Montgomery. The first four episodes, 90-minute telefilms, were followed by 13 50-minute episodes. Colour. / Following a violent storm at sea, a green-eyed stranger (Duffy) with gills and webbed hands is found nearly dead on a beach. He is revived by the attractive female ...
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 ...