SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Friday 8 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: The Telluride Institute
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 ...
Flame Barrier, The
Film (1958; vt It Fell from the Flame Barrier). Gramercy Pictures/United Artists. Produced by Arthur Gardner and Jules V Levy. Directed by Paul Landres. Written by Pat Fielder and George Worthing Yates from a story by Yates. Cast includes Robert Brown, Kathleen Crowley and Arthur Franz. 70 minutes. Black and white. / Attractive Carol Dahlmann (Crowley) hires jungle guide Dave Hollister (Franz) to lead an expedition in search of her missing husband, a wealthy industrialist and ...
Hardy, Phil
(1945-2014) UK journalist, business consultant and expert on rock music and film, on both of which subjects he has published widely, having been founding editor of Studio Vista's Rockbooks series and of the magazine Music Business. Among his notable books on film those most relevant to sf are The Aurum Film Encyclopedia: Science Fiction (1984; vt Science Fiction: The Complete Film Sourcebook 1984; vt The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction Movies ...
Hillman, S A
(? - ) US author of a Near Future medical Technothriller, Cradle Kill (1988), in which prenatal infants are profoundly affected by a chromosomal killer. Reflections of the Future: An Elective Course in Science Fiction and Fact (1975) is a competent primer for school use. [JC]
Beerbohm, Max
Working name of UK author, caricaturist, theatre critic (hailed by his Saturday Review predecessor George Bernard Shaw as "the incomparable Max") and later Radio broadcaster Henry Maximilian Beerbohm (1872-1956). He was initially known for witty and mannered essays published from 1894 in The Yellow Book, The Savoy and other London magazines, first assembled under the self-mockingly grandiose title ...
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. ...