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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.
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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 ...
Smith, Clark Ashton
(1893-1961) US sculptor and author, of primary interest for his tales of Science Fantasy and horror (see Horror in SF); the rich style (sometimes idiomatic, sometimes "jewelled" in the early Lord Dunsany manner) and baroque invention of this work did much to transform the interplanetary romance of the early years of the century into the full-fledged Post-World War Two ...
Space Children, The
Film (1958). Paramount. Directed by Jack Arnold. Written by Bernard C Schoenfeld, from a story by Tom Filer. Cast includes Jackie Coogan, Johnny Crawford, Michel Ray, Peggy Webber and Adam Williams. 69 minutes. Black and white. / This was the last of Arnold's cycle of sf films with producer William Alland, though here the studio is Paramount, not Universal. In this earnest but likeable moral fable, a group of children are "taken over" by a benign ...
Ewers, Hanns Heinz
(1871-1943) German author, spy in Mexico and the USA in World War One, and early member of the Nazi Party, though he soon alienated its leaders through his insistence that his and their obsession with matters of Blood led inevitably (and properly) to psychic and literal vampirism (see Decadence; Vampires). Supermen predominate in his fiction, ...
Foss, Chris
(1946- ) Working name of British artist Christopher F Foss. Foss studied architecture at Cambridge University, and he has worked in sf Illustration since 1970, primarily as a cover artist; he uses brush and airbrush to excellent effect. Foss's smooth, representational style, demonstrated on hundreds of covers, spearheaded a revolution in British sf paperback design in the 1970s, and the artist's success inspired many imitators, creating ...
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 ...