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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.
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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 ...
Short Circuit
Film (1986). Turman-Foster/Tri-Star. Directed by John Badham. Written by S S Wilson, Brent Maddock. Cast includes Steve Guttenberg, Brian McNamara, Ally Sheedy and Fisher Stevens. 98 minutes. Colour. / Military Robot Number Five, a prototype killing machine, is struck by lightning which endows it with sentience. It escapes from evil Nova Robotics, finding refuge with nice animal-lover Stephanie (Sheedy), who assumes it to be ...
Nelson, Albert D
(? -? ) US author of America Betrayed: Save the Nation (1936), a Near Future Dystopia in which Japan has conquered America. [JC]
Wearmouth, Darren A
(? - ) UK author with his brother Marcus Wearmouth of the Activation sequence of Near Future post-Disaster thrillers beginning with First Activation (2011), set initially in a New York dominated by Zombie-like minions of a tyrannical organization bent on reshaping America. Protagonist duties are shared by two ...
Waters, Elisabeth
(1952- ) US author who began to publish work of genre interest with "Tell Me a Story" in Greyhaven (anth 1983) edited by Marion Zimmer Bradley, with whose Darkover sequence and other projects she has long been associated, editing two Darkover anthologies as well as publishing short fiction in that setting, and further editing several volumes of the Bradley-founded Sword and Sorceress anthology ...
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 ...