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Saturday 9 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 ...
Calderón, Gabe
(? - ) Canadian author who identifies as trans, non-binary and Native American. Their first novel, Màgòdiz (2022), is set in a distant Near Future Ruined Earth world; the protagonist of the tale must flee a monstrous entity that or who controls the remnants of Homo sapiens, and with their mate creates stories to sustain their ...
Catling, Brian
(1948-2022) UK academic, film maker, sculptor, performance artist, poet and author, active from the 1970s; he served as Professor of fine art at Ruskin School of Art, Oxford, from 1991, emeritus from 2017. Much of his output in the various but interconnected fields to which he contributed may be very roughly understood in terms of Fantastika, as this term is used in this encyclopedia. Very specifically, his first novel, The Vorrh (2012), which ...
Galactic Cowboys
US rock group who have returned repeatedly to sf themes in their music, often evoking motifs and venues found in sf Westerns. Their 1991 eponymous debut crashes and bashes through songs that use the Moon landing, including audio samples of Neil Armstrong, as a point of reference: particularly "Pump Up The Space Suit" and the ironically titled (given its raucously insistent heavy metal style) "Sea of Tranquillity". "Ranch on Mars" ...
Manchurian Candidate, The
1. Film (1962). MC/Essex/United Artists. Directed by John Frankenheimer. Written by George Axelrod, based on The Manchurian Candidate (1959) by Richard Condon. Cast includes James Gregory, Laurence Harvey, Angela Lansbury, Janet Leigh, John McGiver, Henry Silva and Frank Sinatra. 126 minutes. Black and white. / A group of US soldiers captured in Korea are subjected to elaborate ...
Clute, John
(1940- ) Canadian critic, editor and author, in the UK from 1969; married to Judith Clute from 1964, partner of Elizabeth Hand since 1996. His first professional publication was the long sf-tinged poem "Carcajou Lament" (Winter 1960 [ie Autumn 1959] Triquarterly), though he only began consistently publishing sf reviews in his "New Fiction" column for the Toronto Star (1966-1967), and sf ...