SF Encyclopedia Home Page
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
Sponsor of the day: Andy Richards of Cold Tonnage Books
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 ...
Cobb, Ron
(1937-2020) US cartoonist, animator, illustrator, film designer, director, videogame designer and author, in Australia from 1972; active from the mid-1950s, initially as an animation inbetweener for Disney Studios (see The Walt Disney Company). His first illustration of sf interest was the July 1959 cover for F&SF; he only rarely produced genre cover work since, examples being Autumn Angels (1975) by Arthur ...
Zimlich, Jan
(? - ) US author whose first novel, Not Quite Paradise (1995), is a romantic sf tale set in rural America, where crashlanded Aliens establish First Contact with humans, an action which ends in Sex and other involvements. The complicated plotting in Heart's Play (1998) and The Black Rose (2000) encourage a sense that an underlying ...
Testament
Film (1983). Entertainment Events/American Playhouse. Directed by Lynne Littman. Written by John Sacret Young, based on "The Last Testament" by Carol Amen (?1934-1987). Cast includes Jane Alexander, Leon Ames, William Devane, Lukas Haas and Ross Harris. 90 minutes. Colour. / We follow the ordinary, loving, quarrelsome life of one family in a small Californian town, Hamlin. Without warning, all US cities are destroyed by nuclear weapons. Hamlin, not far from San Francisco, is spared ...
Van Stry, John
(? - ) US author, who also writes as by Jan Stryvant; beginning to publish work of genre interest with "Changes" in Yarf!: The Journal of Applied Anthropomorphics for December 1997. For most of his early career he focused on fantasy series like the long Valens Legacy sequence beginning with Black Friday (2017 ) as by Jan Stryvant [this series and others under this name are not listed in Checklist below]. Van Stry is of sf ...
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 ...