SF Encyclopedia Home Page
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
Sponsor of the day: Andy Richards of Cold Tonnage Books
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 ...
Holder, C F
(1851-1915) US naturalist, sportsman and author, mostly of nonfiction on nature or sport or both; two Young Adult tales are of sf interest: The Treasure Divers: A Boy's Adventures in the Depths of the Sea (1898), involving an Invention and mysteries Under the Sea; and ...
Wolverton, Dave
(1957-2022) US author who also wrote as David Farland, and who began publishing work of genre interest with "The Sky Is an Open Highway" in The Leading Edge for Fall 1985. He began to enter literary contests in that year, winning a few small competitions and then the Best of the Year award in the Writers of the Future Contest for 1986, with "On My Way to Paradise", which appeared in ...
Strachey, John St Loe
(1860-1927) UK journalist, editor (in collaboration with C L Graves) and author of suavely put and extremely influential left-centre opinions; he dominated The Spectator from about 1890 until shortly before his death. This mind-set is reflected in his two books of sf interest: The Great Bread Riots; Or, What Came of Fair Trade (1885 chap) as S L S, a Near Future tale told as from the year 1934, describes the ...
Astounding Award
The current name of the former John W Campbell Award for best new writer. There is a two-year eligibility period: an author first published in 2020 would be eligible for the 2021 or 2022 award but not thereafter. Though closely associated with the Hugo awards and voted for on the same ballot, the Astounding Award is not actually a Hugo. / This best new writer award was last presented under the old name during the ...
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 ...