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Saturday 21 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. ...
Horne, J Arthur
(1881-? ) US author of inspirational tales with a Christian base; God's Earth (1939) counts as sf for its use of a Time Viewer to register the pious marvels of the next age. [JC]
Shattuck, William
(1864-1946) US author of The Keeper of the Salamander's Order: A Tale of Strange Adventure in Unknown Climes (1895), a Fantastic Voyage story whose protagonist, accompanied by demons and other creatures, visits strange lands and Islands, encountering at least one Lost Race en route. The author handles much of this material with an unsubtle Satirical brush. ...
Timerider: The Adventures of Lyle Swann
Film (1983). Zoomo Productions/Jensen Farley Pictures. Directed by William Dear. Written by Dear, Michael Nesmith. Cast includes Belinda Bauer, Peter Coyote, L Q Jones, Ed Lauter and Fred Ward. 92 minutes. Colour. / This Time-Travel Western prefigures the more successful Back to the Future Part III (1989) in its juxtaposition of twentieth-century technology and the generic conventions associated ...
Dake, Charles Romeyn
(1849-1899) US homeopathic doctor, editor and author who began to publish work of genre interest with his first venture into fiction, "The Limits of Imagination" (December 1892 Homeopathic News); his only other short story, also fantastically themed, is "The Death and Regeneration of Gerald Deane" (May 1893 Homeopathic News). His competent Lost-Race novel, A Strange Discovery (1899), is a ...
Clute, John
(1940- ) Canadian critic, editor and author, in the UK from 1969; married to Judith Clute from 1964, partner of Elizabeth Hand since 1996. He began to publish work of genre interest with an sf-tinged poem "Carcajou Lament" in Triquarterly for Winter 1960 [ie Autumn 1959]; he began consistently publishing sf reviews in his "New Fiction" column for the Toronto Star (1966-1967), and later in ...