SF Encyclopedia Home Page
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.
Site updated on 27 November 2023
Sponsor of the day: Andy Richards of Cold Tonnage Books
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 ...
Nylund, Eric S
(1964- ) US author, primarily of fantasy in his more recent career; he is of sf interest primarily for the Jack Potter/Signal sequence comprising Signal to Noise (1998) and A Signal Shattered (1999), stories whose inexpressive style consorts oddly with the gonzo plotting of the (possibly incomplete) epic. In a world combining the Ruined Earth (California has sunk) and ...
Randall, Rodger
(? -? ) UK author of whom nothing is known beyond the ascription to him of one novel of sf interest, The Scarlet Death (circa 1935), in which a criminal Mad Scientist peddles to other criminals a deadly secret Drug. [JC]
Super-Science Fiction
US Digest-size magazine, 18 bimonthly issues December 1956 to October 1959, published by Headline Publications, New York, edited by W W Scott. Super-Science Fiction was a case of simply one magazine too many, coming in the final wave of interest in sf magazines at the end of the 1950s at a time when readers were already turning to the paperback. Scott, who had no experience in science fiction though he was an old-time Pulp magazine ...
Hinchcliffe, Philip
(1944- ) UK television producer, most notably for Doctor Who series, who has also written some Ties for the sequence, including Doctor Who and the Seeds of Doom (1977), Doctor Who and the Masque of Mandragora (1977) and Doctor Who and the Keys of Marinus (1980). In his pomp as a producer, during the years Tom Baker (see Doctor Who) was transforming the role, the ...
Nicholls, Peter
(1939-2018) Australian editor and author, primarily a critic and historian of sf through his creation and editing of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction [see below]; resident in the UK 1970-1988, in Australia from 1988; worked as an academic in English literature (1962-1968, 1971-1977), scripted television documentaries, was a Harkness Fellow in Film-making (1968-1970) in the USA, worked as a publisher's editor (1982-1983), often broadcast film and book reviews on BBC Radio from 1974 and ...