SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Thursday 7 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 ...
Masters, Anthony
(1940-2003) UK educator and author, active from about 1964; he was a prolific author of biographies; his eleven novels for adults are nonfantastic. Relatively early in his career, writing as Richard Tate, he published some deliberately exorbitant shockers, of which The Dead Travel Fast (1971) is of interest for its transgressive invasion of Dracula territory via a series of vampirish murders on a film set. Red Ice (1986) with Nicholas Barker is a ...
Fisher, Philip M, Jr
(1891-1973) US teacher, naval officer, author and financial auditor (in that order), whose work was restricted primarily to the Pulp magazines. His earliest sale was an article in Youth's Companion in 1916; his first fiction sale, and also his first work of sf, was "The Demise of Professor Manried" for All-Story Weekly, 18 August 1917. Here the eponymous professor is able to use electricity to amplify and harness thought ...
Anomalisa
Film (2015). Paramount Animation, HanWay Films, Harmonius Claptrap. Directed by Duke Johnson and Charlie Kaufman. Written by Kaufman. Voice cast includes Jennifer Jason Leigh, Tom Noonan, David Thewlis. 90 minutes. Colour. / Anomalisa is a nonfantastic tale filmed as an exercise in stop-motion animation, with 3D-printed marionettes representing the human cast, a technique usually restricted to children's ...
Verney, John
(1913-1993) UK illustrator and author, active in the former capacity after active service in World War Two, which he described in Going to the Wars (1955). He is of sf interest for some titles in the Callendars sequence of Young Adult tales beginning with Friday's Tunnel (1959), this first volume narrated by February, the oldest Callendar daughter, who helps uncover the true nature of caprium, ...
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 ...