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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 ...
Jeter, K W
(1950- ) US author of importance as an author of horror novels, the highly charged claustrophobia of his style fitting the essential affect of that genre rather better than it does sf. His early work, generally conceived in sf terms, gives off an air of hectic congestion which sometimes interferes with the presentation of ideas, with the cognitively unencumbered articulation of some barrier through which the story (and its protagonists) penetrate; for him, as for most ...
Cox, F Brett
(1958- ) US academic, playwright and author who began to publish work of genre interest with "Love Is All You Need" in Forbidden Lines for October/November 1990. Much of his substantial output of short fiction has been fantasy, with an inclination to jostle the boundaries of traditional genres (see Fantastika); his Anthology, Crossroads: Tales of the Southern Literary Fantastic (anth 2004) ...
Livesey, Eric M
(? - ) UK author of The Desolate Land (1964), a Ruined Earth where – long after the Disaster of a nuclear test gone awry – Monsters spawned by radioactivity roam, a circumstance that does not keep the rump of America from using A-bombs to keep Latin Americans at bay. [JC]
Soukup, Martha
(1959- ) US author whose work, beginning with "Dress Rehearsal" for Universe 16 (anth 1986) edited by Terry Carr, has been restricted to short stories, and who has published several stories whose surface clarity conceals taxingly insistent examinations of readerly assumptions. Soukup won a Nebula Award for Best Story for "A Defense of the Social Contracts" (September 1993 ...
Langford, David
(1953- ) UK author, critic, editor, publisher and sf fan, in the latter capacity recipient of 21 Hugo awards for fan writing – some of the best of his several hundred pieces are assembled as Let's Hear It for the Deaf Man (coll 1992 chap US; much exp vt The Silence of the Langford 1996; exp 2015 ebook) as Dave Langford, edited by Ben Yalow – plus five Best Fanzine Hugos ...