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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. ...
Dr Shrinker
US juvenile tv series (1976). Sid and Marty Krofft Television Productions for ABC-TV (see The Krofft Brothers). Produced by Jack Regas. Directors include Regas, Bob Lally and Bill Hubin. Cast includes Billy Barty, Ted Eccles, Susan Lawrence, Jeff MacKay and Jay Robinson. Sixteen 15-minute episodes. Colour. / Young Brad (Eccles), B J (Lawrence) and Gordie (MacKay) wash up after a boating accident on the isolated ...
Starweb
Board and counter Wargame (1976). Flying Buffalo. Designed by Rick Loomis. / Starweb is a Play by Mail (and, more recently, Play by Email) strategy game which, like Stellar Conquest (1974), includes many of the features later seen in 4X Games. Every player begins the game as absolute ruler of a species which ...
Phelps, Gilbert
(1915-1993) UK broadcaster and author who spent much of his career in the BBC, as a radio producer and in other roles between 1945 and 1960. His first story, "I Have Lived a Hundred Years" in The Faber Book of West Country Stories (anth 1951), prefigured the thematic material of his first sf novel, The Centenarians (1958), whose protagonists attempt – in the end unsuccessfully – to translate their eminence in the arts and sciences into lives safely ...
Newman, John
(1927-1991) UK research chemist, author and fan who as J O Newman contributed a book review to Walter Gillings's Fantasy Review #2 (April/May 1947) and was listed as an associate editor of that publication from #6 (December 1947/January 1948) to #15 (Summer 1949). From 1953 to 1959 he published many science essays as John Newman in New Worlds and occasionally ...
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 ...