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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 ...
Russell, G Warren
(1854-1937) UK-born journalist, publisher, politician and author, in New Zealand by 1865, now remembered primarily for his controversial role in the Spanish influenza epidemic of 1918, when as the government minister responsible he (correctly) allowed a passenger liner to dock in Auckland, an action which (incorrectly) was thought to have deepened the medical crisis. His only novel, A New Heaven (written circa 1902; 1919), is a Utopia set in a ...
Memory Edit
Term used in this encyclopedia for selective Amnesia and/or implantation of false memories, deliberately inflicted upon its victim – though sometimes self-inflicted. Early Proto SF examples include Dr Heidenhoff's Process (1880) by Edward Bellamy and "The Memory Clearing House" (July 1892 Idler) by Israel Zangwill (1864-1926) – the latter featuring ...
Macpherson, Ian
(1905-1944) Scots author, farmer and broadcaster who is of genre interest for his last novel, Wild Harbour (1936), in which a devastating Future War – the expected World War Two – breaks out in 1944. The story centres on a married couple who flee to a cave in the hills of Speyside to escape the looming threat of bombs, Biological Weapons and ...
de Girardin, Delphine
(1804-1855) French poet and author (she was born in the border-city of Aachen during the fourteen years of French rule, 1801-1815), who also wrote under her maiden name, Delphine Gay, as Mme Émile de Girardin and as by Charles de Launay. Neither Le Lorgnon ["The Eyeglasses"] as Delphine Gay (1831) nor La Canne de M de Balzac ["The Cane of Monsieur de Balzac"] (1836) as Mme Émile de Girardin, translated together by Brian ...
Robinson, Roger
(1943- ) UK computer programmer, bibliographer and publisher, active in UK Fandom for many years. The Writings of Henry Kenneth Bulmer (1983 chap; rev 1984 chap) is an exhaustive Bibliography of one of the most prolific sf writers, and Who's Hugh?: An SF Reader's Guide to Pseudonyms (1987) is similarly exhaustive in its listing of Pseudonyms. ...