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 ...
Batman: The Dark Knight Returns
Influential Graphic Novel by writer-artist Frank Miller, starring an aged, cynical and disillusioned Batman, who begrudgingly returns from a ten-year retirement amidst a Near-Future Dystopia that has overrun his beloved Gotham City with gang violence. Published in four volumes in 1986 by DC Comics and ...
Glyn, Coralie
(1866-1928) UK author whose work focused on the social problems of working-class women – she herself was a member of the Carr Glyn family, sister of the fourth Baron Wolverton, and related by marriage to Charles Kingsley [see The Encyclopedia of Fantasy under links below]. The Idyll of the Star-Flower (1895) concerns the early-Christian quest of a Norseman for the eponymous flower, which will heal the world if ...
Gerard, Louise
(1878-1970) UK author, almost exclusively of romances, some of them literally bodice-rippers, featuring heroines who are frequently abducted, bound, raped, and who then fall in love with the aristocratic perp; her first novel, The Golden Centipede (1910), features, on the other hand, a dominatrix white queen, a She figure who rules a Lost Race in the heart of darkest Africa. [JC]
AC Comics
US publisher of various Comics titles, founded in Florida in 1969 by Bill Black, known originally as Paragon Publications and from 1982 to 1984 as Americomics. While primarily publishing a great deal of 1940s Golden Age comics material in various genres, AC Comics is best known for its female Superhero titles. The most famous of these is Femforce (1985-current), believed to be the first all-female superhero team in US comics. ...
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 ...