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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.
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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 ...
Lewis, Mick
(? - ) UK author of The Bloody Man (1998), a horror tale, and of two Ties for the Doctor Who universe, Doctor Who: Rags (2001) and Doctor Who: Combat Rock (2003). [JC]
Bowes, Richard
(1944- ) US author whose works tend to be set in, and to evoke, a congested, magically altered New York, the city where he has lived since childhood, and which infuses most of his short fiction, little of which is sf. Warchild (1986) and its sequel, Goblin Market (1988), set in an Alternate-History version of the city, follow the growth and adventures of a telepathic teenager ...
Sanders, George A
(1836-1909) US author whose riposte to Edward Bellamy, Reality: Or, Law and Order vs Anarchy and Socialism: A Reply to Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward and Equality (1898), argues that the labouring poor are not in truth all that poor, and in any case are motivated to work primarily by noble ideals. [JC]
Gask, Arthur
(1869-1951) UK-born dental surgeon and author who began his latter career in the early 1921, after his 1920 move to Australia. Among his many detective thrillers are two tales of some sf interest, The Red Paste Murders (1924; vt Murder in the Night 1932), the eponymous chemical being of borderline-sf composition, and The Fall of a Dictator (1939), which ventures into the Near Future. [JC]
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 ...