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.
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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 ...
Mois, Joseph
Author, possible pseudonym of Edith Redknap (see Errol Collins); certainly there is no evidence of an actual Joseph Mois. The byline appears on the unremarkable A Spot on the Sun (1954 chap), #3 in the shortlived Fantastic Science Thriller pocketbook series. [DRL/SH]
Farrow, G E
(1862-1919) UK author whose work as been thought of as being almost exclusively of Fantasy for children, often showing the direct influence of Lewis Carroll. None of his books are easily understood as sf, though two of his earlier tales involve journeys in space: in The Missing Prince (1896), a Pierrot character descends to Earth from the Moon; and the protagonists of ...
Woodbury, David O
(1896-1981) US author who began to publish work of genre interest with "The Electric Snare" in Astounding for July 1934, about the Invention of a deadly Ray; in Mr Faraday's Formula: A Dean Riam Suspense Story (1965) enemy agents steal a Gravity-control device. Part of a non-sf series, the book verges on being a Technothriller. [JC]
Barnes, Jonathan
(1979- ) UK author who also writes as J S Barnes; the Somnambulist sequence beginning with The Somnambulist (2007) is a complex detective thriller set in a Steampunk version of Late Victorian London, congenially evoking some of the affirming affect created by Tim Powers in The Anubis Gates (1984) and other tales. The stage magician Edward Moon and ...
Nicholls, Peter
(1939-2018) Australian editor and author, primarily a critic and historian of sf through his creation and editing of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction [see below]; resident in the UK 1970-1988, in Australia from 1988; worked as an academic in English literature (1962-1968, 1971-1977), scripted television documentaries, was a Harkness Fellow in Film-making (1968-1970) in the USA, worked as a publisher's editor (1982-1983), often broadcast film and book reviews on BBC Radio from 1974 and ...