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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 ...
Baldwin, Bill
Working name of US author Merl William Baldwin Jr (1935-2015), known mainly for the efficient Helmsman adventure-sf Space Opera sequence, whose plots are deployed on a galactic scale, initially beginning with The Helmsman (1985; rev vt The Helmsman: A Special Director's Cut 2004) and closing with The Defiance (1996); a late addition to the series is The Turning Tide (2011). Proof copies of ...
Diehl, Mrs A M
(1844-1912) UK musician and author; her career as a professional pianist began in 1861; she began writing after retiring from public musical performances. Of her nearly forty books of fiction, one is of some sf interest, Dr Paull's Theory: A Romance (1893), the plot of which hinges on Identity Transfer and its consequences. [JC]
Donson, Cyril
(1919-1986) UK journalist and author, at one period of his life a schoolmaster at the Royal Naval School, Tal Handaq, Malta. The generic nature of his first story – "Mouse Into Man" in Titbits Magazine in 1940 – has not been established. He claimed to have published more than 6000 pieces, fiction and nonfiction, under various names including Lonny Cordis, Russ Kidd, Via Hartford and Anita Mackin. His known sf is, however, restricted to three routine adventures for ...
Harrison, Harry
(1925-2012) US illustrator, editor and author, born Henry Maxwell Dempsey (though his father changed his name to Harrison soon after his son's birth), resident in later years, after many years of travelling, partly in the UK and partly in the US. Harrison began his career as a commercial artist about 1946, working chiefly in comics as an illustrator and writer, often in collaboration with Wallace A Wood, supplying illustrations as well to magazines like ...
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. ...