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Friday 31 March 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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Brown, Eric
(1960-2023) UK author who began publishing sf – after a children's play, Noel's Ark (1982 chap) – with "Krash-Bangg Joe and the Pineal-Zen Equation" for Interzone in Autumn 1987; like several further tales assembled in The Time-Lapsed Man and Other Stories (coll 1990), it is set in a future world dominated by the effects of bio-engineering and dense with information. This marriage of Cordwainer ...
Jennings, Humphrey
(1907-1950) UK documentary film maker and editor, a co-founder of Mass Observation in 1936; his thirty films have gained increasing renown since his early death from a fall in Greece while scouting locations for a new film. Of sf interest is his Hitler Wins Alternate History short film, The Silent Village (1943), which is shot in documentary style. Much of his energy in ...
Collier, Michael
(? - ) UK author of two unremarkable Doctor Who Ties, each referring to the Eighth Doctor: Doctor Who: Longest Day (1998) and Doctor Who: The Taint (1999). [JC]
Bennett, Margot
(1912-1980) Scottish screenwriter, journalist and author, her first novel being a crime novel, Time to Change Hats (1945); most of her subsequent work, in a subtle and atmospheric style, was in the same genre. A fantasy story, "An Old-Fashioned Poker for My Uncle's Head" (August 1946 Lilliput), was reprinted in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in May 1954. Her first sf novel, The Long Way Back (1954), has become well ...
Cummings, Ray
Working name of US author Raymond King Cummings (1887-1957), writer of over 600 identified stories under various names in various genres, about 350 of them between 1935 and 1942; it is estimated he probably wrote at least 750 tales in all. He was one of the few writers active during the heyday of US Pulp-magazine sf (1930-1950) to have begun his career before Hugo Gernsback launched Amazing in 1926. One of ...
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. His first professional publication was the long sf-tinged poem "Carcajou Lament" (Winter 1960 [ie Autumn 1959] Triquarterly), though he only began publishing sf reviews in 1964 and sf proper with "A Man Must Die" in New Worlds for ...