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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.
Site updated on 4 December 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 ...
Beekman, Doug
Working name of American artist Douglas L Beekman (1952- ). After briefly studying at the Columbus College of Art and Design in his home state of Ohio, he grew dissatisfied with the school and moved to New York City to complete his training at the School of Visual Arts and the Art Students League. He then began painting book covers, mostly for minor publishers; his first noteworthy effort, perhaps, was his cover for a 1977 edition of Philip K ...
Odle, E V
(1890-1942) UK editor and author; in the former capacity he was the first editor 1926-circa 1935 of the British Argosy Magazine (see The Argosy). As younger brother of the UK illustrator and artist Alan Odle (1888-1948), who was the husband of Dorothy M Richardson (1873-1957), Odle came into close contact with J D Beresford, who had been instrumental in publishing the first volume of Richardson's ...
Koman, Victor
(1954- ) US author who began publishing sf with "When It Worked" for New Libertarian Notes, 5 September 1976. Much of his subsequent output has emphasized material and points of view that could be characterized under the Libertarianism rubric. After publishing Starship Women (15 July 1977-10 March 1978 Impulse as "Saucer Sluts"; 1980), and collaborating with Andrew J Offutt ...
David, James F
Pseudonym of US author James D Foster (1952- ), most of whose work has combined horror and sf, as in his first novel which starts the Thunder series, Footprints of Thunder (1995), in which an incursion of Dinosaurs into urban America is dealt with primarily in terms of the feelings aroused; and his second, Fragments (1997), in which the Cybernetic implications of combining a ...
Clute, John
(1940- ) Canadian critic, editor and author, in the UK from 1969; married to Judith Clute from 1964, partner of Elizabeth Hand since 1996. His first professional publication was the long sf-tinged poem "Carcajou Lament" (Winter 1960 [ie Autumn 1959] Triquarterly), though he only began consistently publishing sf reviews in his "New Fiction" column for the Toronto Star (1966-1967), and sf ...