SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Friday 8 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.
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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 ...
Beneath the Planet of the Apes
Film (1970). Apjac/Twentieth Century Fox. Directed by Ted Post. Written by Paul Dehn and Mort Abrahams, based on characters created by Pierre Boulle in La planète des singes (1963; trans as Planet of the Apes 1963). Cast includes James Franciscus, Linda Harrison, Charlton Heston and Kim Hunter. 95 minutes. Colour. / In this first and best of four ...
Woodbury, David O
(1896-1981) US author who began to publish work of genre interest with "The Electric Snare" in Astounding for July 1934, about the Invention of a deadly Ray; in Mr Faraday's Formula: A Dean Riam Suspense Story (1965) enemy agents steal a Gravity-control device. Part of a non-sf series, the book verges on being a Technothriller. [JC]
Yoshioka Hitoshi
(1960-2023) Japanese author closely associated with the visual media, whose vast output and populist panderings often occlude his deeper efforts at Satire and more mature experiments in Recursive SF. Dropping out of Waseda University partway through a literature degree, he worked part-time at the Anime company Studio Hard, and made his professional debut novelizing the non-sf film ...
McDowell, Emmett
(1914-1975) US author who also wrote as Robert E McDowell, beginning his career after service in World War Two with The Happy Castaway (Spring 1945 Planet Stories; 2020 ebook). His work as author in other genres is various; he published several mystery novels, beginning with Switcheroo (1954 dos), none listed here, and as an historian specialized in regional studies of Kentucky. In his sf – ...
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 ...