SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Friday 8 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 ...
Sinderby, Donald
Pseudonym of UK author Donald Ryder Stephens (1898-1983), in active service during World War One. The last of his five novels, Mother-in-Law India (1930), is a Near Future tale in which the British Empire threatens to crack apart due to Britain's socialist government's foolish promise to give India her freedom (see Imperialism; Politics), opening the ...
Vowel, Chelsea
(? - ) Canadian author, a member of the Métis Nation of Alberta, who also writes as by âpihtawikosisân, active from before 2014. Much of her nonfiction and initiatives are concerned with the fate of indigenous languages and culture in a world that continues to endanger these traditions and lives; Indigenous Writes: A Guide to First Nations, Métis & Inuit Issues in Canada (2016). She is ...
Jones, R G
(1889-1969) Working name of American illustrator Robert Gibson Jones. After some art training in Chicago, he worked mostly in advertising for two decades before becoming, in 1942, a regular cover artist for Ziff-Davis publications. In addition to covers for their non-genre titles like Mammoth Adventure, Mammoth Detective, and Mammoth Western, Jones painted 90 covers for Amazing Stories and ...
Keyes, Daniel
(1927-2014) US author and university lecturer in English. He began his sf career as associate editor of Marvel Science Fiction (see Marvel Science Stories), February-November 1951, and began publishing work of genre interest in that magazine with "Precedent" in 1952. He is known mainly for one excellent novel, Flowers for Algernon (April 1959 F&SF; exp 1966), winner of a 1960 ...
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 ...