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 ...
Herbert, James
(1943-2013) UK advertising art director and author, best known for bestselling tales of horror, several of which have an sf premise (see Horror in SF). His first and still best known novel, The Rats (1974), which begins the Rats sequence, is a Disaster novel in which London is overwhelmed by a vicious strain of giant Mutant rats. The chaos continues in ...
Baraniecki, Marek
(1954- ) Polish environmental engineer, journalist and author, who began publishing work of genre interest with "Karlgoro, godzina 18" ["Karlgoro, 6 p.m."] for Fantastyka in January 1983, stylistically rather conventional and plain but conceptually an invigorating meditation on the power of human spirit and mind versus chaos. The story involves a group of military mentalists supervised by a spiritual guru of incredible powers ...
Vickers, Salley
(1948- ) UK poet and author, active from around 2000, most of whose work is nonfantastical. Mr Golightly's Holiday (2003) features a faded novelist who finds that, via some tentative musings about his next book, has become the Secret Master of the small village where he is staying; Jehovah is invoked. A literal reading of Where Three Roads Meet (2007; vt Where Three Roads Meet: The Myth of Oedipus ...
Ryan, C J
(? - ) Pseudonymous US author whose Gloria VanDeen Space Opera sequence, featuring the ex-wife of a galactic Emperor (see Galactic Empires) employed as a tough smart high-level interstellar troubleshooter at the Department of Extraterrestrial Affairs, comprises Dexta (2005) and Glorious Treason (2005). The stories are lively but unambitious; Gloria ...
Langford, David
(1953- ) UK author, critic, editor, publisher and sf fan, in the latter capacity recipient of 21 Hugo awards for fan writing – some of the best of his several hundred pieces are assembled as Let's Hear It for the Deaf Man (coll 1992 chap US; much exp vt The Silence of the Langford 1996; exp 2015 ebook) as Dave Langford, edited by Ben Yalow – plus five Best Fanzine Hugos ...