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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 ...
Oppegaard, David
(1979- ) US author whose first novel, The Suicide Collectors (2008), radically mutates an old horror trope – the corpse-devouring ghoul – into a Near Future sf tale of considerable force. For five years Earth has suffered under a "disease" or perhaps recognition known as the Despair, which has caused the Suicide of most of the world's population; their bodies are routinely gathered up ...
Hersey, John
(1914-1993) US author and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, born to missionary parents in China where he lived until he was ten; he is perhaps best known for his early book-length essay on the first use of the atomic bomb in warfare, Hiroshima (31 August 1946 The New Yorker; 1946), probably the first text to qualify as a "non-fiction novel", and the most illustrious example of the form. The Child Buyer (1960), a Near-Future ...
Martin, George R R
(1948- ) US editor and author whose career can be divided into four overlapping parts, in more or less chronological order: as a writer of sf; as a writer and producer for television; as an editor of original Anthologies; and as a dominant creator of dynasty fantasy. He began to publish work of genre interest with "The Hero" in Galaxy for February 1971, and his success was thereafter rapid. "A Song for Lya" (June ...
Lee, Fonda
(1979- ) Canadian author, in USA from early adulthood; her first novel, Zeroboxer (2015), is a Young Adult adventure set in a Space Opera universe with Faster Than Light travel, whose young protagonist, a professional athlete (see Games and Sports) whose gladiatorial entrepreneurial skills expose him to a larger world ...
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. ...