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Wednesday 6 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 ...
Hunt, Nick
(? - ) UK author, most of whose work has been nonfiction meditations on travel, though The Parakeeting of London: An Adventure in Gonzo Ornithology (2019) amusedly adds speculations about budgerigars to the Matter of London. Loss Soup and Other Stories (coll of linked stories 2022) comprises a set of tales about lost worlds and lost lives conveyed to its compiler through the eponymous soup, which is ...
Blaine, John
Pseudonym of US author Harold Leland Goodwin (1914-1990) who specialized in sf-adventure novels for teenage readers. His books tended to emphasize the nuts and bolts of science and technology, and were more carefully written than most series books for teens. As Blake Savage he also wrote an sf novel for teens, Rip Foster Rides the Gray Planet (1952; vt Assignment in Space with Rip Foster 1958; vt Rip Foster in Ride the Gray Planet 1969). The protagonist ...
James, Brett
(? - ) US author of Space Operas, often with Military SF elements, featuring inimical Alien civilizations which threaten to dominate reachable space. They include The Deadfall Project (2012) and the Outer Rim Chronicles beginning with Tangent (2017). [JC]
Valente, Catherynne M
(1979- ) US editor, fancaster, poet and author, born Bethany Thomas, Valente apparently being her legal name, who won a Rhysling Award for her long poem, "The Seven Devils of Central California" (Summer 2007 Farrago's Wainscot); she began to publish prose work of genre interest with "Exsanguinations: A Handbook for the Educated Vampire by Anna S Oppenhagen-Petrescu" in By Blood We Live (anth ...
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 ...