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.
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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 ...
Gardner, John [2]
(1933-1982) US author and academic who achieved popularity with his large contemporary novel, The Sunlight Dialogues (1972); much of his work is fantastic, but none of it is in fact sf [for full entry see The Encyclopedia of Fantasy under links below]. His second novel, The Wreckage of Agathon (1970), is a fantasy of history set in an anachronistic Sparta; his third, Grendel (1971), mordantly ...
Hammond, Ray
(1948- ) UK science journalist, futurologist and author; his nonfiction includes The On-Line Handbook (1984) and The World in 2030 (2007), which predicts and describes the Singularity. He began publishing sf novels with Emergence (2001), which explores a billionaire tycoon's attempts to save the Near Future world through simplistic tampering with threatened ...
Animaniacs
1. US animated tv series (1993-1998; vt Steven Spielberg Presents Animaniacs). Amblin Entertainment, Warner Bros. Animation. Created by Tom Ruegger. Executive producer Steven Spielberg. Directors include Alfred Gimeno, Dave Marshall and Rusty Mills. Writers include Peter Hastings, Nicholas Hollander, Randy Rogel, Paul Rugg and Sherri Stoner. Voice cast includes Jess Harnell, Tress MacNeille, Rob Paulsen and Sherri Stoner. 99 21-minute ...
Gaillard, Stephen
(? -? ) US author, possibly pseudonymous, whose only publication seems to be The Pirates of the Sky: A Tale of Modern Adventure (1915), a competent Young Adult tale in which an intrepid pilot and a resourceful newspaper reporter track down and are instrumental in defeating an anarchist conspiracy whose plans hint at the Pax Aeronautica: utilizing a giant armoured black hovercraft ...
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 ...