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Sunday 22 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. ...
Dubina, Peter
(1940-1990) Czech-born author, in Germany after 1945, who also wrote as by R F Garner and Joh Kirby, concentrating on Westerns for most of his career; of sf interest is Eintscheidung im Weltraum (1973; trans Patricia Crampton as Decision in Space 1976), in which three human Scientists are abducted by a UFO and tricked into believing in the ...
Dreifuss, Kurt
(1897-1991) German-born author, in US from an early age, whose The Other Side of the Universe (1961) presents a low-key, Utopian vision of a future with little government, equal incomes, and social freedoms galore. [JC]
Lofting, Hugh
(1886-1947) UK civil engineer and author, mostly in the USA from 1912, though he joined the Irish Guards in 1916, was severely wounded in 1917 and invalided out. It was during his period in the trenches that – like some other central creators of twentieth century fantasy, including J R R Tolkien, with first-hand experience of World War One – he began to create a fantasy universe, at least in part to sidestep a ...
Wellman, Manly Wade
(1903-1986) Portuguese West Africa-born author (1903-1986), in America from the age of six, prolific in both Fantasy and sf, though far more significant for works in the former; he also wrote Westerns – though less frequently than did his brother, Paul I Wellman (1898-1966) – and crime fiction, most of his nonfantastic books appearing between 1947 and 1961. Wellman began to publish work of genre interest with a fantasy, "Back ...
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 ...