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Tuesday 28 November 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 27 November 2023
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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 ...
World of Giants
US tv series (1959; also known as W-O-G). Ziv Television Programs. Created by Dick Dorso. Produced by William Alland and Otto Lang. Various directors. Cast includes Arthur Franz, Marcia Henderson and Marshall Thompson. One season of thirteen 30-minute episodes. Black and white. / Mel Hunter (Thompson) is a Federal agent who on a past secret mission beyond the Iron Curtain became the victim of atomic radiation and suffered permanent ...
Life on Mars
US tv series (2008-2009). Kudos Film and Television for ABC. Created by Josh Appelbaum, André Nemec, and Scott Rosenberg, based on the British series of the same name, created by Matthew Graham and Ashley Pharaoh. Writers include Appelbaum, Nemec and Rosenberg. Directors include Michael Katleman, Darnell Martin and Alex Zakrzewki. Cast includes Jason O'Mara as Sam Tyler, Harvey Keitel as Gene Hunt, Gretchen Mol as Annie Norris, Michael Imperioli as Ray Carling and Jonathan Murphy ...
Knoblock, Edward
(1874-1945) US-born playwright and author born Knoblauch; in UK from 1897, changing his name to Knoblock in 1916 when he became a British citizen; during World War One he served in the intelligence service. Most of his plays were nonfantastic, including collaborations with other authors like Arnold Bennett and J B Priestley, though his most popular drama, ...
Pfeil, Fred
Working name of US academic and author John Frederick Pfeil (1949-2005), whose sf novel, Goodman 2020 (1986), portrays in a superbly suffocating present tense the Dystopian corporate USA of 2020 CE, where all power has fallen into the hands of priest-like businessmen. The most powerful of these hires Goodman in the role of "professional friend", to give him moments of human society, but Goodman eventually kills him, escapes into the barrios (and the ...
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. ...