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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 ...
Stapp, Robert
(1914-1985) US journalist and author whose sf novel, A More Perfect Union (1970), presents an Alternate History version of America, the Jonbar Point being Abraham Lincoln's decision to evacuate Fort Sumter in 1861, leading to a separate Confederate government. By 1981 the CSA has become even more singularly unpleasant than its fount in Slavery might suggest, and is threatening ...
White, Steve
Pseudonym of US army officer and author Robert McGarvey (1948- ), most of whose work is Space Opera, often employing Military SF plots, and usually arrayed in series. His first sequence, the Starfire series – partially written with David Weber, who had developed Starfire, the Wargame to which it is ...
Taylor, Frank
(1894-1972) US author of House of the Hunter (1962), set in a deserted Post-Holocaust Los Angeles (see California), as an unseen entity gradually eliminates the last survivors in an isolated house. [JC]
Barnwell, William
(1943- ) US author whose most interesting foray into the sf/fantasy genre was his well-written Blessing Trilogy, consisting of The Blessing Papers (1980), Imram (1981) and The Sigma Curve (1981). Set in Eire (here called Imram), this complex quest through a Ruined-Earth world, where some sort of grand design by mysterious powers is operating, at first appears lively but conventional ...
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 ...