SF Encyclopedia Home Page
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 ...
McDaniel, David
(1939-1977) US author who also wrote as Ted Johnstone. He published a Space Opera, The Arsenal Out of Time (1967), and a number of Ties, most of them based on the Television series The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (1964-1968). These begin with The Man from U.N.C.L.E. #4: The Dagger Affair (1966), include ...
Perrault, Ernest G
(1922-2010) Canadian author and librettist who in prose concentrated on nonfiction regional studies of British Columbia, where he was born and died. Of his novels The Twelfth Mile (1972), about an Arctic disaster, is marginal; of direct sf interest is Spoil (1975), a Near Future tale in which drilling for oil in the Arctic causes a profound Ecological Disaster when a rig blows ...
Watson, Jude
Pseudonym of US author Judy Blundell (? - ) who under her own name has written nonfantastic Young Adult novels, one of them, What I Saw and How I Lied (2008), winning the National Book Award. As Watson, after the nonfantastic Brides of Wildcat County series of young adult romantic Westerns featuring a crossdressing tomboy, she is best known for various ...
O'Brien, Flann
Pseudonym of Irish author and civil servant Brian O'Nolan or Ó Nualláin (1911-1966), who also wrote – mainly for his 1940-1966 Irish Times newspaper column "Cruiskeen Lawn" ["The Little Overflowing Jug"] – as Myles na Gopaleen ["Myles of the Little Horses" or "Myles of the Ponies"], sometimes rendered Myles na gCopaleen. The Irish Times columns are classics of often fantastic Humour; various selections have been published [see ...
Nicholls, Peter
(1939-2018) Australian editor and author, primarily a critic and historian of sf through his creation and editing of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction [see below]; resident in the UK 1970-1988, in Australia from 1988; worked as an academic in English literature (1962-1968, 1971-1977), scripted television documentaries, was a Harkness Fellow in Film-making (1968-1970) in the USA, worked as a publisher's editor (1982-1983), often broadcast film and book reviews on BBC Radio from 1974 and ...