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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 ...
Gamma People, The
Film (1956). Warwick Film Productions/Columbia Pictures (US)/Columbia Pictures Corporation (UK). Produced by John Gossage. Directed by John Gilling. Written by Gilling and Gossage from a story by Robert Aldrich and Louis Pollock. Cast includes Eva Bartok, Michael Cirida, Paul Douglas, Pauline Drewett, Leslie Phillips and Walter Rilla. 79 minutes, cut to 76 minutes in some prints. Black and white. / American reporter Mike Wilson (Douglas) and his English photographer Howard (Phillips) ...
Bakker, R Scott
(1967- ) Canadian author whose early work was Fantasy, but who has more recently published some sf work. The complex ongoing fantasy enterprise – which, under the overall title of The Second Apocalypse, comprises two series, the Prince of Nothing sequence beginning with The Darkness That Comes Before (2003) and the Aspect-Emperor sequence beginning with The Judging Eye (2008) – ...
Maciste e la Regina di Samar
Film (1964; vt Hercules against the Moon Men US; Maciste contre les hommes de pierre France). Nike Cinematografica/Comptoir Français de Productions Cinématographiques. Directed by Giacomo Gentilomo. Written by Arpad DeRiso and Nino Scolaro; story by DeRiso, Scolaro, Gentilomo, and Angelo Sangermano. Cast includes Sergio Ciani (billed as "Alan Steel"), Jany Clair, Delia d'Alberti, Jean-Pierre Honoré and Anna Maria Polani. 90 minutes. Colour. / In the ...
Page, Kathy
(1958- ) UK author, in Canada from 2001, whose first novels – Back in the First Person (1986) and The Unborn Dreams of Clara Riley (1987) – are associational, though tinged with elements of literary fantasy. Island Paradise (1989), set a century after the Unfought War, promulgates an ambiguous worldwide Utopia whose citizens enjoy lives uncluttered by violence, but are bullied to die soon ...
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 ...