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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.
Site updated on 4 December 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 ...
Day, Donald B
(1909-1978) Pioneer sf indexer, resident in Oregon. His Index to the Science Fiction Magazines 1926-1950 (1952; rev 1982), has become, along with its successors compiled by other hands (see Bibliographies), an essential tool for sf research. [PN]
Hyphen
Northern Irish Fanzine (1952-1965) edited from Belfast by Walt Willis, with Chuck Harris and later Ian McAuley. 36 issues duplicated on UK quarto paper, May 1952 to February 1965, plus a single-issue revival in 1987 [see below]. / Hyphen is probably the most famous of humorous fanzines. Although production standards (especially for early issues) were less than impressive, the quality and ...
Martin, Michael
(? - ) UK author of a spoof Planetary Romance, A Year Near Proxima Centauri (1992), set on the planet Provender, a gourmandizer's heaven; the target of Martin's mild Satire is A Year in Provence (1989) by Peter Mayle (1939-2018), which arguably romanticizes rural life as experienced by visitors. [JC]
Wehrstein, Karen
(1961- ) Canadian author who began publishing work of genre interest with "O.R.3" in Shivers: Canadian Tales of the Supernatural (anth 1990) edited by Greg Ioannou and Lynne Missen. She has contributed three titles to Fifth Millenium, a Shared World fantasy sequence devised and controlled by S M Stirling (for titles see Checklist). [JC]
Robinson, Roger
(1943- ) UK computer programmer, bibliographer and publisher, active in UK Fandom for many years. The Writings of Henry Kenneth Bulmer (1983 chap; rev 1984 chap) is an exhaustive Bibliography of one of the most prolific sf writers, and Who's Hugh?: An SF Reader's Guide to Pseudonyms (1987) is similarly exhaustive in its listing of Pseudonyms. ...