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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 ...
Murray, Alfred
(? -? ) UK author of The Old French Professor; Or, the Tragedy of the Cafe Bertin (1907) whose eponym, something of a Mad Scientist, hopes to apply his Invention, a Weapon that uses radio waves to wreak destruction, in the imposition of world peace; unfortunately, he destroys a restaurant, and himself, first. [JC]
Wilhelm, Kate
(1928-2018) US author, married to Damon Knight from 1963 until his death in 2002; beyond her writing, she was long influential, initially along with her husband, in the Milford Science Fiction Writers' Conference, which he founded in 1958, and its offshoot, the Clarion Science Fiction Writers' Workshop, in which she was directly involved ...
Upstream Color
Film (2012). erbp. Written and directed by Shane Carruth. Cast includes Meredith Burke, Carruth, Kathy Carruth, Thiago Martins, Amy Seimetz and Andrew Sensenig. 96 minutes. Colour. / A conceptual designer (Seimetz) is infected with a mind-controlling Parasite (see Parasitism and Symbiosis) by a thief (Martins) who empties her accounts and leaves her with no memory of her ordeal; she and other victims are ...
Steiger, A J
(1900-1970) US author and journalist, a Moscow-based foreign correspondent, whose philosophical novel The Moon Man (1961) involves the thoughts of immortals (see Immortality) from another Dimension who may seek our aid in a fight to preserve peace in the universe. [PN]
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 ...