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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 ...
Melville, Herman
(1819-1891) US author whose first professional publication, "Fragments from a Writing Desk" (4-18 May 1839 Democratic Press and Lansingburgh Advertiser), is an exercise in Gothic grotesquerie. He is of course best known for such radically symbolic novels as The Whale (1851 3vols; vt Moby-Dick: Or, The Whale 1851 2vols); the great whale of this novel has long served as an archetype for the more Metaphysical variety of sf ...
Scaevola, Peter
(? - ) US author of '68: A Novel of Presidential Politics (1964), set in Near Future America where a demagogic candidate exploits racism, anti-semitism and a range of fundamentalist Paranoias in his bid to become president. [JC]
World War III Breaks Out
Japanese film (1960). Original title Dai-sanji sekai taisen: Yonjû-ichi jikan no kyôfu; vt The Final War; vt World War III 41 Hours of Fear. Toei Company. Directed by Shigeaki Hidaka. Written by Hisataka Kai, based on a story by Shukan Shincho. Cast includes Michiko Hoshi, Yoshi Kato, Yukiko Nikaido, Yoshiko Mita and Tatsuo Umemiya. 75 minutes. Black and white. / The film opens with slides showing the corpses of babies ...
Bull, Emma
(1954- ) US author and editor, married to author and editor Will Shetterly; she began as an author of fantasies, her first being "Rending Dark" (in Sword and Sorceress, anth 1984, ed Marion Zimmer Bradley), and her best known perhaps being her first novel, War for the Oaks (1987): this won a Locus Award as best debut novel. Her second novel, Falcon (1989), ...
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 ...