SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Wednesday 6 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.
Site updated on 4 December 2023
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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 ...
Williams-Ellis, Amabel
Nickname and working name of Mary Annabel Nassau Williams-Ellis (1894-1984), UK editor and author born Mary Annabel Strachey and under that surname an early member of the Bloomsbury Group to which her cousin Lytton Strachey (1880-1932) also belonged. After her marriage in 1915 to Clough Williams-Ellis (1883-1978) she used his surname, collaborating with him on some nonfiction works, most interestingly on Ecological threats to the environment; and participating with ...
Icons
A number of historical, fictional and mythical characters have acquired iconic status in sf. Most such figures from myth and Religion have their proper home in Fantasy, but nevertheless appear repeatedly in sf and Science Fantasy – not only Shaggy God Stories but subtler rationalizations or reworkings of legend. In this category are ...
Evans, Christopher [2]
(1951- ) Welsh-born UK chemist, teacher and author who has published sf and fantasy novels under his own name and as Christopher Carpenter, Nathan Elliott, Robert Knight and John Lyon, and some non-genre fiction as by Evan Christie and Alwyn Davies. His first publications, released more or less simultaneously, were the rather bad Plasmid: A Novelization (1980) as by Robert Knight, a Tie to an untraceable (and perhaps unmade) movie, ...
Made in Abyss: Dawn of the Deep Soul
Japanese animated film (2020); original title Made in Abyss: Fukaki Tamashii no Reimei. Kinema Citrus. Based on the Manga by Akihito Tsukushi. Director: Masayuki Kojima. Writers: Hideyuki Kurata. Voice cast includes Shiori Izawa, Mariya Ise, Minase, Toshiyuki Morikawa and Miyu Tomita. 105 minutes. Colour. / A continuation of the television series Made in Abyss (2017), following the ...
Langford, David
(1953- ) UK author, critic, editor, publisher and sf fan, in the latter capacity recipient of 21 Hugo awards for fan writing – some of the best of his several hundred pieces are assembled as Let's Hear It for the Deaf Man (coll 1992 chap US; much exp vt The Silence of the Langford 1996; exp 2015 ebook) as Dave Langford, edited by Ben Yalow – plus five Best Fanzine Hugos ...