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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 ...
Tymn, Marshall B
(1937-2020) US editor, academic, sf/fantasy bibliographer and editor, whose work concentrates on the pedagogical implications of both sf and fantasy (see SF in the Classroom). After a first, short, self-published bibliographical guide – A Directory of Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing Houses and Book Dealers (1974 chap) – Tymn issued a stream of helpful material, including ...
Debans, Camille
(1833-1910) French journalist and author, some of whose work, little yet translated, is sf. His Future War tale, Les Malheurs de John Bull (1884; trans as John Bull's Downfall 1884; vt John Bull's Misfortunes 1884); new trans Brian Stableford as The Misfortunes of John Bull in coll 2015 [for subtitles and further details see Checklist below], applies ...
Kaveney, Roz
(1949- ) UK critic, editor and author. Her sf criticism, beginning in the late 1970s (before 1980 as by Andrew Kaveney), has appeared in specialist journals like Foundation and in non-genre outlets like the Washington Post and Books and Bookmen; it is marked by a seemingly off-hand general erudition and a knowing sharpness about the field; she created the term ...
Kostić, Zvonimir
(1950- ) Serbian playwright and author whose sf novel, Donji Svetovi (1986; trans Ivan Novaković as The Underworlds 2008), fits an Underground totalitarian Dystopia into a frame that evokes Urban Fantasy [see The Encyclopedia of Fantasy under links below], as this isolated world is located directly underneath ...
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 ...