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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 ...
Clarke, A C G
(1912-2002) UK author of two routine sf novels, Into the Darkness (1961), an Invasion story set in the twenty-second century, and The Mind Master (1963). [JC]
French, Sean
(1959- ) UK author, most of whose work has been in collaboration with his wife Nicci Gerard (1958- ), writing together as by Nicci French; most of their fiction consists of nonfantastic psychological thrillers. The Imaginary Monkey (1993) by French solo edges into the latticework of Fantastika through the transformation of its protagonist into a monkey (see ...
Unferth, Deb Olin
(1968- ) US author initially noted for her short stories, most of which have been assembled as Minor Robberies (coll 2007) and Wait Till You See Me Dance (coll 2017), many of them surreally apophthegmatic. She is of sf interest for Barn 8 (2020), a narrative which edges by steps into the very Near Future as Climate Change hits and an animal-liberation freeing of ...
Bhatia, Gautam
(1988- ) Indian lawyer, essayist and author, resident in the UK; author of studies in Indian jurisprudence including Offend, Shock, or Disturb: Freedom of Speech Under the Indian Constitution (2015). He is of direct sf interest for the Chronicles of Sumer sequence beginning with The Wall (2020), set in an Earth-like venue at some indeterminate time in what could be the Far Future, where a vast circular ...
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 ...