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 ...
Watson, Robert
(1882-1948) Scottish-born screenwriter, editor and author, in Canada from 1908, moving to California in 1933 to continue his cinema work. Of his several romantic adventures, High Hazard: A Romance of the Far Arctic (1929) is a Lost World tale featuring a clement enclave in the far north, where creatures out of Prehistoric SF roam, along with giants. [JC]
Superheroes [magazine]
Letter-size saddle-stapled Cinema magazine printed on cheap newsprint. Published by Warren Publishing. Credited editor: James Warren. One issue only, October 1966. / This publication seems to have been designed entirely to take advantage of the Superheroes craze ignited by the Television series Batman (1966-1968) and the ...
Duel
Made-for-tv film (1971). ABC/Universal. Directed by Steven Spielberg. Written by Richard Matheson, based on his original story "Duel" (April 1971 Playboy). Cast includes Eddie Firestone, Charles Steel and Dennis Weaver. 75 minutes; expanded and released outside the USA as a feature film, 90 minutes. Colour. / Universal Studios were so impressed by this television film directed by ...
Contributors
Contributors to this encyclopedia may be identified by their initials, appearing (along with others if the entry has multiple authors) at the end of the main text for each entry. The first list below links initials to full names. Roughly half of the contributors themselves receive entries in this book, and are listed below with their surnames marked as normal hyperlinks to their entries. Brief descriptions of contributors without entries are incorporated into the list. A second list, further ...
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 ...