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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. ...
Tanigawa Nagaru
(1970- ) Japanese author largely in the Light Novel (chapbook) format, whose works bridge the ever-closing gap between fans of literary sf, Manga and Anime in Japanese culture. A graduate in Law from Kwansei Gakuin University, he first published sf with Dengeki Aegis 5 ["Shock! Aegis 5"] (March 2003 Dengeki Moeō; fixup 2004), a ...
Vaughn, Carrie
(1973- ) US author who began to publish work of genre interest with "The Girl with the Pre-Raphaelite Hair" in Talebones for Fall 1999; it was assembled in Amaryllis and Other Stories (coll 2016). This collection, plus her first, Straying from the Path (coll 2011), both contain material ranging widely through the remit of contemporary Fantastika, the second including stories like ...
Keverne, Richard
Pseudonym of UK journalist and author Clifford James Wheeler Hosken (1882-1950), in active service during World War One, who wrote detective novels between 1926 and 1944, mostly as by Keverne, though occasionally under his own name; he was the first cousin of William Henry Martin Hosken, who wrote mostly as by Wyndham Martyn. Of some sf interest for its modest use of Scientific Romance ...
Postal Worlds
Games such as Chess have been played by post since at least 1824, when the members of the newly formed Edinburgh Chess Club challenged their London counterparts to a correspondence match, and probably much earlier. These games, however, were played in alternating turns between individual participants, each of whom had a board displaying the current state of play. The concept of a game in which several players submit their orders for a turn to ...
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 ...