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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.
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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 ...
Attebery, Brian
(1951- ) US academic and author best known for his work in the analysis of fantasy as a genre [see Checklist below]; for this work in particular he was given an IAFA Award for Distinguished Scholarship in 1991, though the 2009 Pilgrim Award was given him for his work in general. He served as co-editor with Ursula K Le Guin, and with Karen Joy ...
Porter, Henry
(1953- ) UK journalist and author, whose The Master of the Fallen Chairs (2005) is a Young Adult Timeslip tale set in a house which, riven by a temporal fault line, registers new deaths, whenever they occur, through the sequential toppling over of the thirteen eponymous chairs. [JC]
Severance, Carol
(1944-2015) US author who began publishing work of genre interest with "Isle of Illusion" for Tales of the Witch World (anth 1987) edited by Andre Norton, an anthology of stories set in Norton's Witch World Shared World. Severance's first novel, Reefsong (1991), which won the Compton Crook/Stephen Tall Memorial Award, features an ...
Chesterton, Rupert
(? -? ) UK author, active for perhaps two decades from around 1907. In his only work of any sf interest – the Phantom series comprising The Phantom Battleship (1911) and The Captain of the "Phantom": The Further Adventures of Captain Vanstone of the "Phantom" Battleship (1921) – the valiant British naval officer Vanstone captains a mystery ship, with advanced Weapons, initially on behalf ...
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 ...