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Thursday 19 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. ...
Waugh, Charles G
(1943- ) US college professor, anthologist and author, most of whose work up to 2002 – 193 titles all told – was in collaboration with Martin H Greenberg, either alone or with further collaborators. These included such "name" authors as Robert Adams, Poul Anderson, Piers Anthony, Isaac ...
Sitwell, Osbert
(1892-1969) UK poet and author whose siblings, Edith Sitwell (1887-1964) and Sacheverell Sitwell, have gained modestly in esteem as against the posthumous fading of his reputation; though his own work was formally conventional, with his brother he was an influential proponent of Modernism, assembling more than one important exhibition. He was in active service throughout ...
Narayan, R K
(1906-2001) Working name of Indian author Rasipuram Krishnaswami Iyer Narayanaswami, noted for realistic novels about everyday life in southern India. He is of mild sf interest because a subplot of his novel The Vendor of Sweets (1967) involves a proposal to construct a Machine to write novels (see Wordmills). [GW]
Sharecrop
A term almost certainly devised by Gardner Dozois in the late 1980s to designate a story or book which has been written on hire; that is, assigned to an author – who will not hold copyright in the piece that s/he writes – by a franchiser or the copyright owner of the concept being developed. To describe a text as sharecropped is in 1995 almost certainly to disparage it as commodity fiction, designed to fit a prearranged marketing slot and written ...
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 ...