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Sunday 3 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 ...
Fantasy Fiction
1. US Digest-size magazine. Two issues, May and November 1950, published by Magabook, edited by Curtis Mitchell. "Old and New Fantasy Stories but Always the Best" was the slogan of this short-lived magazine, whose stories were largely reprinted from general Pulps of the 1930s and early 1940s. It also offered prizes for reports of true fantastic experiences and haunted houses. #2 was retitled Fantasy Stories, carried a lengthy ...
Funaro, Sergio
(1922-1986) San Marino-born physician and author, in US from before World War Two; the overall remit of his Future History, How It All Ended: The Decline and Demise of the West as Reconstructed by Johann Sebastian Barberini in the Year of our Lord 4776 (1973), is indicated by its subtitle. [JC]
Datta, Sukanya
(1961- ) Indian zoologist, with a doctorate from the University of Calcutta, and author of both popular science books and sf short stories, the latter first assembled as Once Upon a Blue Moon: Science Fiction Stories (coll 2006). Her work, some of which could be described as Hard SF, focuses on the challenge of new Technologies in the complex world of Near Future ...
Cooper, Colin
(1926-2012) UK playwright, music critic and author, active as a scriptwriter for Television and Radio, who also wrote at least one crime novel as by Daniel Benson. His first sf was a six-part BBC radio serial, "Host Planet Earth" (1966). His first sf novels, The Thunder and Lightning Man (1968) – a humorous tale of Alien Invasion – and Outcrop ...
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 ...