[3] Born in Australia's state of Victoria in Melbourne, he spent two decades from 1968 to 1988 as an expatriate, first in the USA, and then the UK.

He first travelled to the USA in 1968 with a Harkness Fellowship in movie making, and has scripted television documentaries.

[6] A completely revised, updated, and greatly expanded version of the Encyclopedia, co-edited with Clute, was published in 1993, and won the 1994 Hugo for the same category.

[4] The third edition, with Clute and David Langford, was released online as a beta text in October 2011.

[4] Genre Fiction: The Roaring Years (2022) is a posthumous collection of his reviews and essays which he had planned, titled and written an introduction for circa 2012 but was unable to complete.