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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 ...
Ness, Patrick
(1971- ) US author resident in the UK whose first novel, The Crash of Hennington (2003), imports a herd of rhinos to an American seaside town, where strange events ensue (see Equipoise). He is of sf interest for a Young Adult sequence – the Chaos Walking series comprising Chaos Walking, Book One: The Knife of Never Letting Go (2008), which won the ...
Ashby, Richard
(? - ) US author who began publishing fiction of genre interest with "A Joke for Harry" for Amazing in September 1949, and who was published short fiction actively for several years. His sf novel, Act of God (December 1951-January 1952 Other Worlds; exp 1971), concerns a conspiracy in 2002 to deprive the one man who has gained Immortality of his ...
Gautier, Émile
(1853-1937) French anarchist, imprisoned 1883-1885 for making speeches, and journalist specializing in popular science; best known for the nonfiction Le Darwinisme social ["Social Darwinism"] (1880), a text which familiarized the term Social Darwinism for French readers. Solo he published an sf tale, "Le Désiré" (1892 La Science Illustrée), and with Marie-Francois ...
Rocket's Blast Comicollector
US photocopied Comics Fanzine/Semiprozine published on good-quality paper. Published by the Science Fiction and Comics Fan Association. Editors included G B Love and James Van Hise. 125 issues for 1964 to 1983, numbered #29-#153. Publication was monthly to 1978; thereafter nominally bimonthly but increasingly erratic from 1979. / This began with the 1962 merger of two Fanzines ...
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 ...