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Friday 8 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 ...
Devine, Arthur D
Pseudonym of South African author and journalist Arthur Durham Divine (1904-1987), in the UK from before World War Two and active as a war correspondent throughout that conflict; he also wrote as A D Devine, A D Divine, David Divine and David Rame. Of genre interest is Wings over the Atlantic (date unknown but pre-1938), in which a brilliant Mad Scientist attempts the traditional task of conquering the world with his ...
Kaempfert, Wade
An editorial House Name pseudonym (pronounced Kemfer) used by the editors of Rocket Stories: Lester del Rey on the first two issues and Harry Harrison on the third. [PN]
John W Campbell Memorial Award
Created by Harry Harrison and Brian W Aldiss, this is given annually in July for the best sf novel of the previous year published in English, selected by a committee of academic critics and sf writers. The membership of the jury has undergone a number of changes, and the award has been variously administered from first the USA, then the UK, Ireland, Sweden and then back to the USA at the University of Kansas at Lawrence in ...
Rimworld
A common item of sf Terminology, denoting a planet in the galactic rim region (see Galactic Lens). Rimworlds are of importance in John Brunner's Interstellar Empire sequence and provide the various settings of A Bertram Chandler's John Grimes/Rim World stories; early stories in Frank Herbert's ...
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 ...