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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 ...
Arreola, Juan José
(1918-2001) Mexican author and academic whose full name was Juan José Arreola Zúñiga. Best known for his fantastic short stories, especially the Kafkaesque "El guardagujas" ["The Switchman"] (7 May 1950 México en la Cultura), he is considered one of Mexico's premier experimental short story authors and one of the masters, alongside Jorge Luis Borges, of the essay-story. Borges also described ...
Wedlake, G E C
(1897-1978) UK playwright and author who is of some sf interest for The Wrecking Ray (1935), the eponymous Ray apparently attacking via radio waves. [JC/SH]
Hillgarth, Alan
(1899-1978) UK soldier, intelligence officer – rising in that capacity to Chief of British Naval Intelligence, Eastern Theatre – and author, whose fifth novel, The Black Mountain (1933), is a Near Future tale of revolution and politics in Bolivia, with a Lost Race element conveyed through the charismatic young protagonist's mysterious teacher, perhaps a Secret Master ...
West, D
Working name of UK author, artist and critic Donald West (1945-2015), active in Fandom from the early 1970s, his first publication being Illustrations to J.R.R. Tolkien (graph 1971 chap); his fanzine DAISNAID (Do As I Say Not As I Do) appeared irregularly from 1976 to 1997. He began to publish fiction of genre interest with the sf tale "The Pit" in The Gollancz/Sunday Times Best SF Stories (anth 1975; vt Let's Go to Golgotha ...
Robinson, Roger
(1943- ) UK computer programmer, bibliographer and publisher, active in UK Fandom for many years. The Writings of Henry Kenneth Bulmer (1983 chap; rev 1984 chap) is an exhaustive Bibliography of one of the most prolific sf writers, and Who's Hugh?: An SF Reader's Guide to Pseudonyms (1987) is similarly exhaustive in its listing of Pseudonyms. ...