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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. ...
Murphy, Warren
(1933-2015) US author, married to Molly Cochran, known largely for the Destroyer sequence, a long series of spoof thrillers, many with Richard Ben Sapir, featuring the Doc Savage-like adventures of Remo Williams, a White man (and avatar of Shiva the Destroyer) trained in the paranormal combat arts of Sinanju, which allow him (for instance) to interpenetrate his body with other matter (see ...
Meeker, Nathan Cook
(1817-1879) US journalist with the New York Tribune; developer who, backed by his editor Horace Greeley (1811-1872), founded the Union Colony in the Colorado Territory on Utopian lines; and Indian Agent for the federal government, in which capacity he was killed by Utes driven to that extremity by his insistence that they take up farming and observe the Christian Religion; and author. He is of sf interest for his ...
Explorers
Film (1985). Edward S Feldman/Paramount. Directed by Joe Dante. Written by Eric Luke. Cast includes Ethan Hawke, River Phoenix and Jason Presson. 109 minutes. Colour. / Three schoolboys (Hawke, Phoenix, Presson), tipped off by a dream, employ a Computer to help create a sphere that can move very quickly and is impervious to Gravity; they use it to power a ...
Hruska, Alan
(1933-2022) US attorney, publisher, filmmaker, playwright, screenwriter and author whose sf novel, Borrowed Time (1984), attempts with some success to suggest analogies and crossings between various Parallel Worlds and the bicameral human brain (see Julian Jaynes). His first two films, both dramas involving the law, appeared in the twenty-first century. [JC]
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 ...