SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Wednesday 6 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.
Site updated on 4 December 2023
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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 ...
Fawcett, Bill
Working name of US anthologist, packager and author William Brian Fawcett (1947- ), much of whose work – especially his edited or packaged products – has been anonymous [the Checklist below is certainly incomplete]. His fiction has generally been collaborative: examples include the Gamebook Combat Command in the World of Robert Asprin's Cold Cash War: Cold Cash Warrior (1989) with Robert ...
Mahmud, Mustafa
(1921-2009) Egyptian philosopher, journalist and author. As a child from a middle-class family, he was able to enter university and study medicine; due to illness which hospitalized him for two years during his studies, he became interested in philosophy and religion. He started contributing to leading Egyptian Magazines and journals in the late 1940s and in 1960 left his medical career to devote himself fully to writing. He wrote some 80 books, of which the ...
Purtill, Richard
(1931-2016) US academic and author whose first work of genre interest was the nonfiction study Lord of Elves and Eldils: Fantasy and Philosophy in C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien (1974); separate examinations of these two authors from a Christian standpoint followed [see Checklist below]. Purtill's Kaphtu Universe sequence, beginning with The Golden Gryphon Feather (1979) and extending to two trilogies, is fantasy inspired by archaeology and the myths of ancient ...
Phair, Colette
(1982- ) US author whose first novel, Nightmare in Silicon (2007), set in a Near Future where Medicine has sufficiently advanced to allow Identity Transfer of minds from diseased bodies to impervious Robot housings; the dying protagonist's experience of this process sharply evokes a range of Feminist ...
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 ...