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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 ...
Fitzpatrick, Ernest Hugh
(1863-1933) US doctor, poet and author, whose first novel with sf content, The Marshal Duke of Denver; Or, the Labor Revolution of 1920 (1895) as by Hugo Barnaby, uninterestingly inveighs against the rise of unions; and whose second, The Coming Conflict of Nations; Or, the Japanese-American War (1909), is a Future War tale in which Japan – incensed at American treatment of Japanese immigrants – invades America, but is ...
Zombies
Of the three chief classes of Supernatural Creature most popular in fantastic fiction – the others being Vampires and Werewolves – zombies seem the least supernatural and the most easily rationalized in sf terms, though at its origin the term clearly described an entirely supernatural entity, and was so understood in the late nineteenth century, when it was used by such authors as ...
MacDonald, George
(1824-1905) Scottish author and editor, father of Ronald MacDonald and grandfather of Philip MacDonald, perhaps now best known for his fantasies for children and his fairy tales [see Checklist]. His former occupation as a clergyman was reflected in his allegorical fantasies: Phantastes: A Faerie Romance for Men and Women (1858), comprising a Pilgrim's Progress through a secondary world in search of ...
Pärn, Priit
(1946- ) Estonian director, writer and animator; originally a plant ecologist, who in 1974 or shortly afterwards joined Joonisfilm, the animation division of the state-run Tallinnfilm film studios. / Estonian animators have been a major influence on Soviet Bloc animation, in part due to their country's proximity to Finland and its television signals, allowing a wider pool of inspiration. Pärn is probably the most important of these ...
Langford, David
(1953- ) UK author, critic, editor, publisher and sf fan, in the latter capacity recipient of 21 Hugo awards for fan writing – some of the best of his several hundred pieces are assembled as Let's Hear It for the Deaf Man (coll 1992 chap US; much exp vt The Silence of the Langford 1996; exp 2015 ebook) as Dave Langford, edited by Ben Yalow – plus five Best Fanzine Hugos ...