SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Wednesday 6 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.
Site updated on 4 December 2023
Sponsor of the day: Andy Richards of Cold Tonnage Books
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 ...
Stewart, James
(? - ) UK author, possibly pseudonymous, who is of some sf interest for Danger from Grassen (1946), a post-World War Two thriller for boys set mostly in a Ruritanian version of Lichtenstein, here called Grassen, where a rogue Nazi Mad Scientist is preparing to release a deadly bacteriological Pandemic on the world. ...
Defying Gravity
American-Canadian tv series (2009). British Broadcasting Corporation, Fox Television Studios, and Omni Film Productions for CTV, SPACE and ProSieben. Created by James D Parriot. Producers include Michael Chechik and Michael Edelstein. Writers include Parriot, Sheri Elwood, Meredith Lavender, and Marcie Ulin. Directors include Sturla Gunnarsson, David Straiton, Peter Howitt, Fred Gerber, and Jeff Woolnough. Cast includes Ron Livingston as Maddux Donner, Laura Harris as Zoe Barnes, Malik ...
Deighton, Jack
Pseudonym of Scottish chemist and author Jack D Stephen (1953- ), who was active in UK Fandom under his own name, and who began publishing work of genre interest with "The Face of the Waters", as by Jack Deighton, in New Worlds 2 (anth 1992) edited by David S Garnett. His only novel to date, A Son of the Rock: A Space Libretto (1997), which unusually combines ...
Roberts, Ralph
(1945-2021) US author and publisher who began to publish work of genre interest with "A Sailor's Delight" in Asimov's for May 1980; his short fiction appeared in various magazines and anthologies to 2018. His one novel is The Hundred-Acre Spaceship (2002), a comedy that spoofs Cold War tensions and antipathies. The Invention by a young genius of "disruptor field technology", a ...
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 ...