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Saturday 9 December 2023
Welcome to the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Fourth Edition. Some sample entries appear below. Click here for the Introduction; here for the masthead; here for 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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Compton, D G
(1930-2023) UK author, born of parents who were both in the theatre; he increasingly lived in the USA after 1981. As Guy Compton, he published some unremarkable detective novels, beginning with Too Many Murderers (1962), and as by Frances Lynch produced some nonfantastic Gothics throughout his career; but soon turned to sf with tales almost always set in the Near Future, and anatomizing moral dilemmas within that arena: the future is very clearly ...
Lancour, Gene
Working name of Gene Louis Fisher (1947- ), US author of the Sword-and-Sorcery Dirshan, the God-Killer sequence featuring a barbarian warrior strenuously in the service of a goddess: The Lerios Mecca (1973), The War Machines of Kalinth (1977), Sword for the Empire (1978) and The Maneaters of Cascalon (1979). Lancour's next book was sf: The Globes of Llarum ...
Hulme-Beaman, Emeric
(1864-1937) Indian-born author, in UK from 1882 or earlier, one of nineteen children of the military surgeon Arden Hulme Beaman (1828-1915), several of whom were authors; he wrote at least four thrillers as by Ben Strong in collaboration with William Senior Ellis (1876-1940). The feats of the mysterious protagonist of his Ozmar sequence, Ozmar the Mystic (1896) and The Prince's Diamond (1898), reflect his long immersion in ...
Maloney, Mack
Pseudonym of US author Brian Kelleher (1952- ) for two sequences, the first being the Wingman series of Military SF sf novels set in a Ruined Earth America, beginning with Wingman (1987), pausing for well over a decade after Wingman #16: The Tomorrow War (1999), and resuming with Wingman #17: Attack on Area 51 (2013). The more ambitious Starhawk ...
Deep Impact
Film (1998). DreamWorks Pictures and Paramount Pictures present a Zanuck/Brown production. Directed by Mimi Leder. Written by Bruce Joel Rubin and Michael Tolkin. Cast includes Robert Duvall, Morgan Freeman, Téa Leoni and Elijah Wood. 121 minutes. Colour. / In this old-fashioned Disaster movie, humanity's future is threatened by a large Comet on a course to collide with the Earth. ...
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 ...