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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 ...
Event Horizon [magazine]
1. US Online Magazine published by Walt Stoneburner and edited by Danny Adams of Roanoke, Virginia. It saw three issues Spring and Fall 1997 and Spring 1998 when the title was sold to Pamela Weintraub (see below). The magazine was something of an experiment for both Stoneburner and Adams, though they managed to put together three acceptable issues. Adams even secured a reprint from Nelson Bond, whom he knew locally. ...
Godgame
A frequent shorthand in sf/fantasy Terminology for tales whose outcome is controlled, and whose characters are usually weighed in the balance, by a god-like figure. The term was coined by John Fowles to describe the scenario of The Magus (1965; rev 1977), whose working title was in fact «The Godgame». His magus-figure Conchis ensnares the young narrator in a maze of delusive scenes that challenge ...
Ferman, Joseph W
(1906-1974) US publisher and editor (though the latter in name only), born in Lithuania, in the USA from childhood and naturalized as a US citizen in 1930. After a long career with the magazine American Mercury, Ferman – as general manager of Mercury Publications – become involved with 1947 plans for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, oversaw its launch in 1949, was listed from August 1954 to October 1970 as Publisher and from December ...
Armour, Donald
(1908-1988) UK author of one short but powerful tale of supernatural horror, Swept & Garnished (1938), and one novel of sf interest, So Fast He Ran (1940), a Timeslip story whose contemporary protagonist moves at moments of epiphanic desperation backwards in time, first to Arthurian Britain, then by stages into the Stone Age, where he introduces the wheel to the natives (see Prehistoric SF) before ...
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 ...