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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 ...
Holdstock, Robert P
(1948-2009) UK author with an MSc in medical zoology from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. He spent 1971-1974 in medical research before becoming a full-time writer, though he had published his first story, "Pauper's Plot", for New Worlds as early as November 1968. He wrote much of his short fiction soon after. Among the more notable stories are the novelettes "Travellers" (in Andromeda 1, anth 1976, ed Peter ...
Anachronox
Videogame (2001). Ion Storm. Designed by Tom Hall. Platforms: Win. / Anachronox is a Computer Role Playing Game played in a third person three-dimensional perspective, strongly influenced by such Japanese games as Chrono Trigger (1995). The gameplay combines exploration, combat, puzzles and conversation in a similar way to that of its models, including the ...
Sandes, John
(1863-1938) Irish-born journalist and author, in Australia from 1887, noted for a determinedly patriotic, Christian form of Australian nationalism; he also wrote as by Don Delaney. His first novel, Love and the Aeroplane: A Tale of Tomorrow (1910), is set in a distant Near Future Australia transformed by advances in Transportation, with monorails and other innovations. The story itself is a somewhat congested ...
Road to Hong Kong, The
Film (1962). Melnor. Directed by Norman Panama. Written by Melvin Frank and Norman Panama. Cast includes Joan Collins, Bing Crosby, Walter Gotell, Bob Hope, Dorothy Lamour and Robert Morley. 91 minutes. Black and white. / Veteran con-men Harry Turner (Crosby) and Chester Babcock (Hope) have lured 400 investors with their latest scam, an "Interplanetary Spacecraft" from "Fly-It-Yourself, Inc." that is actually little more than a propeller cap and jet pack worn by Babcock on a modest, ...
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. ...