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.
Site updated on 27 November 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 ...
Gilbert, Sheila E
(1949- ) US editor and publisher who for many years has shared the roles of editor-in-chief and publisher of DAW Books with Betsy Wollheim (whom see). For her work at DAW she has also shared Chesley Awards for best art director with Wollheim in 1990 and 1992, and received a solo 2016 Hugo award as best professional editor (long form). Her only ...
Wells, Robert Gilbert
(?1865-? ) US teacher and author, mostly resident in Iowa, where he published Anthropology Applied to the American White Man and Negro (1905), which despite its title is a fictional Satire on race relations in post-Reconstruction America (see Race in SF) with numerous sf and fantastic elements, including Invisibility, Time Travel and a ...
Island of Terror
Film (1966; vt Night of the Silicates). Planet/Universal. Directed by Terence Fisher. Written by Alan Ramsen, Edward Andrew Mann. Cast includes Eddie Byrne, Peter Cushing, Carole Gray and Edward Judd. 89 minutes. Colour. / This is one of the three films with sf themes made for Planet by Terence Fisher, best known for his Horror movies – of which this, despite its sf trappings, is one. (The others are The ...
Tonks, Angela
(1913-2003) UK author, in the USA from 1959, whose Mind Out of Time (1958) deals with a telepathic relationship (see ESP) between two men, beginning when they are both incarcerated during World War Two, and moving uneasily into the Cold War, where the intimacy must be broken. [JC]
Nicholls, Peter
(1939-2018) Australian editor and author, primarily a critic and historian of sf through his creation and editing of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction [see below]; resident in the UK 1970-1988, in Australia from 1988; worked as an academic in English literature (1962-1968, 1971-1977), scripted television documentaries, was a Harkness Fellow in Film-making (1968-1970) in the USA, worked as a publisher's editor (1982-1983), often broadcast film and book reviews on BBC Radio from 1974 and ...