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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 ...
Estoclet, Alphonse E
(1847-1929) French-born teacher, translator and author, in UK circa 1880s, in US from 1890. His translations, of little-known late novels by Jules Verne, have not been subject to serious examination. [JC]
Bills, Randall N
(1971- ) US author, solely of Ties, beginning with Battletech: Path of Glory (2000). His Star Trek ties are written in collaboration with Loren L Coleman. [JC/DRL]
Winsor, G McLeod
(1856-1939) UK author in whose first sf novel, Station X (1919), a psychic Invasion from Mars is repelled by an Earth-Venus alliance, despite the Martians' use of an Antigravity device and advanced Weapons to power a hijacked warship; in 1975 the book was reprinted with an introduction by Richard Gid Powers which mystifyingly claims it to be ...
Kerr, Philip
(1956-2018) Scottish author, married to Jane Thynne (see C J Carey) until his death, who first came to notice for his Bernard Gunther sequence, the first volumes of which – beginning with March Violets (1989) – are police procedurals set in pre-World War Two Berlin, but which move into occult territory after Gunther has survived the war. Much of his later work is of direct sf interest, beginning ...
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 ...