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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.
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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 ...
Kirst, Hans Hellmut
(1914-1989) German author best known for nonfantastic novels about World War Two. His Near-Future sf novel, Keiner Kommt Davon (1957; trans Richard Graves as No One Will Escape 1959; vt The Seventh Day 1959), deals with the period directly preceding World War Three and with the atomic Holocaust that then kills off the cast, ...
Wharton, Michael
(1913-2006) UK journalist and author born Michael Bernhard Nathan, but taking his mother's surname in adulthood; he is best known for his anti-modern, deeply conservative, often hilarious Way of the Word newspaper columns (intermittently 1957-2006) written as by Peter Simple. These highly fantasticated columns show the influence of similar work by Beachcomber (see J B Morton) and Myles na Gopaleen (see Flann ...
Webb, William Thomas
(1918-2006) UK author who began publishing work of genre interest with "Escape from Plenty" (February 1958 Nebula) as by W T Webb; he wrote a moderate number of Space Operas for Robert Hale Limited, some of them involving Time Travel and travel into other Dimensions; The Fate of the Phral (1980), ...
Isabella, Tony
(1951- ) US author who began to publish work of genre interest with "If Wishes Were Horses" with Bob Ingersoll for The Ultimate Super-Villains (anth 1996) edited by Stan Lee, and who has since published a Captain America Tie, Captain America: Liberty's Torch (1998) with Bob Ingersoll and a ...
Clute, John
(1940- ) Canadian critic, editor and author, in the UK from 1969; married to Judith Clute from 1964, partner of Elizabeth Hand since 1996. His first professional publication was the long sf-tinged poem "Carcajou Lament" (Winter 1960 [ie Autumn 1959] Triquarterly), though he only began consistently publishing sf reviews in his "New Fiction" column for the Toronto Star (1966-1967), and sf ...