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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.
Site updated on 27 November 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 ...
Bogart, William G
(1903-1977) US editor and author of Pulp fiction from the late 1930s, best known under his own name for the Johnny Saxon series of nonfantastic thrillers beginning with Hell on Fridays (1940), noirishly illuminating about the pulp magazine word, including publishers like Street and Smith. He is best known for his contributions to the Doc Savage series as one of the authors publishing under the ...
Wernham, Mark
(? - ) UK journalist and author whose first novel, Martin Martin's on the Other Side (2008), is a Satire so gonzo and broad that it approaches slapstick Absurdist SF in its portrayal of the vaguely Near Future Britain, where the action unpacks. The protagonist Jensen Interceptor – hired by the government to track surviving acolytes of the late ...
First Person Shooter
Term used to describe a form of Videogame distinguished by a three-dimensional character's eye view of the world and fast paced, often violent, gameplay which requires players to react rapidly and acquire physical skills. "First Person" refers to the camera position – as opposed to the third person view of the main character used in most graphical Adventures and ...
Pittock, Mrs M A Weeks
(1856-1915) US author of a Feminist Utopia, The God of Civilization: A Romance (1890), in which mutual false "gods" – the rigid ideals that define and divide the sexes – are transcended; something like sexual freedom ensues. [JC]
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 ...