SF Encyclopedia Home Page
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.
Site updated on 4 December 2023
Sponsor of the day: Ansible Editions
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 ...
Cheetham, Anthony
(1943- ) UK publisher, initially at New English Library, where his enthusiasm led that company to acquire UK paperback rights to Frank Herbert's Dune (fixup 1965). Subsequent employers included Sphere, of which he was editorial director from 1968 and later managing director. He founded or worked on the early stages of Futura (1973-1979), Macdonald Futura (1979-1982), Century (1982-1985), Century Hutchinson (1985-1989), ...
Popov, Alexander
(1954- ) Bulgarian sf author and publisher who has won awards for his short fiction, some written under the pseudonym Al Vickers, some translated into foreign languages. His sf novel «Provinzia Pet» ["Province Five"] as by Al Vickers was contracted in 1991 for publication in Russian translation in Russia. His recently established Gemini publishing house began, in 1991, to publish a fortnightly sf magazine, Drugi Svetove ["Other Worlds"]. Popov wrote the ...
Loriga, Ray
Working name of Spanish director, screenwriter and author Jorge Loriga Torrenova (1967- ), who is of sf interest primarily for his tenth novel, Rendición (2017; trans Carolina de Robertis as Surrender 2020), set in an abstracted but violent Near Future world ravaged by constant War. The protagonists of the tale are relocated to a small and literally transparent ...
Powe, Bruce
(1925-2018) Canadian author whose sf novels concentrate on political disorders, a theme very common to post-World War Two writers from his country. Killing Ground: The Canadian Civil War (1968) as by Ellis Portal sets its fatal conflict in Near Future Canada. The Last Days of the American Empire (1974) more far-rangingly places its conflicts in the twenty-first century, when a North American hegemony is threatened by ...
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 ...