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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 ...
Antonelli, Lou
(1957-2021) US journalist, editor and author who began publishing work of genre interest with "Silvern" in RevolutionSF for June 2003, followed by his first professional sale "A Rocket for the Republic" in Asimov's for September 2005; he eventually published some 125 short stories. Many of these are Tall Tales [see The Encyclopedia of Fantasy under links below] set in a fantasticated Texas, a dozen ...
Avon Science Fiction Reader
US Digest-size magazine, published by Avon Books, edited by Donald A Wollheim, and – as with its companion series, Avon Fantasy Reader treated by Wollheim as an Anthology series [see his entry, therefore, for list of titles] but by contemporary readers as a Magazine. It had a policy similar to that of its companion, but ...
Sector General [series]
James White's long-running Series of Sector General stories, centred on the vast, multispecies Space Habitat whose full name is Sector Twelve General Hospital, are popular and likeable examples of Medicine-based sf. The sequence began with Hospital Station (stories November 1957-June 1960 New Worlds; coll of linked stories ...
Wells, Catherine
Working name of US author Catherine Jean Wells Dimenstein (1952- ) who began publishing sf with the tightly-woven Coconino sequence – comprising The Earth Is All That Lasts (1991), Children of the Earth (1992) and The Earth Saver (1993) – set aeons hence in a Ruined Earth devastated by Climate Change and other ...
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 ...