SF Encyclopedia Home Page
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 ...
Reed, Ishmael
(1938- ) US poet, playwright and author, who emerged in the 1960s as a central representative of the New Black Aesthetic movement, and a figure controversial to the Black critical establishment from the publication of his first novel, The Free-Lance Pallbearers (1967), a powerful Satire in which America is visualized as the digestive system of a cannibal used-car salesman. Yellow-Back Radio Broke-Down (1969), a ...
Dirac, Hugh
(? - ) UK medical doctor and author of an sf novel, The Profit of Doom (1970), in which a surgeon (see Medicine) implants brain cells from a foetus into the body of a diseased millionaire, who then gains Immortality. [JC]
Bilenkin, Dmitri
(1933-1987) Russian geologist and author of both fiction and popular-science books. For most of his career he concentrated on short stories – assembled as Marsianskii Priboi ["The Surf of Mars"] (coll 1968), Noch' Kontrabandoi ["Night of Contraband"] (coll 1971), Proverka na Razumonst' ["Test for a Reason"] (coll 1974), Snega Olimpa ["The Snows of Olympus"] (coll 1980), Litso V Tolpe ["A Face in the Crowd"] (coll 1985) ...
Hirschfeld, Burt
(1923-2004) US author, notably of some crime novels set in Florida; Gas!; Or, It Became Necessary to Destroy the World in Order to Save It (1970) novelizes the Roger Corman film Gas-s-s-s, Or It Became Necessary to Destroy the World ... (1970). [JC]
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 ...