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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.
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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 ...
Star General
Videogame (1996). Catware. Designed by Bill Fawcett. Platforms: DOS, Win. / Star General is a turn-based strategic war game dealing with conflicts on an interstellar scale (see Computer Wargames), much influenced by board and counter Wargames. The design is an expanded version of Panzer General (1994 Strategic Simulations Inc, DOS; ...
Man or Astro-Man?
Rock band formed in Auburn, Alabama, in the early 1990s, core members being Star Crunch, Birdstuff and Coco, The Electronic Monkey Wizard. They might be Aliens who crashlanded on Earth, as they claim, or Brian Causey, Brian Teasley and Robert DelBueno. Musically recapturing the sound of the instrumental surf-guitar music of early 1960s acts like Dick Dale and the Chantays, but with an added punk gusto; they are steeped in sf influences, particularly 1950s/1960s ...
Hunter, John
(1891-1961) UK author of a huge number of stories for the Boys' Papers and other markets from the early 1900s, under his own name and as by John Addiscombe, L H Brenning, Francis Brent, Stanton Doyle, Anthony Drummond, Peter Meriton and others, his total output being estimated as about 20,000,000 words. His sf work has not been fully identified. Typical early examples include two book-length serials: "The Lure of the Lost Land" (27 February-20 May 1922 ...
About Time
UK film (2013). Universal Pictures. Written and directed by Richard Curtis. Cast includes Lindsay Duncan, Domhnall Gleeson, Tom Hollander, Rachel McAdams, Bill Nighy and Margot Robbie. 123 minutes. Color. / Shortly after his twenty-first birthday, Tim (Gleeson) is told by his father (Nighy) that the men in their family have the ability to Time Travel within the limits of their own past. Tim uses this knowledge to win the affections of Mary (McAdams), ...
Robinson, Roger
(1943- ) UK computer programmer, bibliographer and publisher, active in UK Fandom for many years. The Writings of Henry Kenneth Bulmer (1983 chap; rev 1984 chap) is an exhaustive Bibliography of one of the most prolific sf writers, and Who's Hugh?: An SF Reader's Guide to Pseudonyms (1987) is similarly exhaustive in its listing of Pseudonyms. ...