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Saturday 27 July 2024
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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Arthur C Clarke Award
This award has been given since 1987 for the best sf novel whose UK first edition was published during the previous calendar year, and consists of an inscribed bookend and a sum of money from a grant initially donated by Arthur C Clarke. In 2001 the prize money – until then a constant £1000 – was increased to £2001 as a gesture to 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968); it has since risen by ...
Read, Diann Thornley
(1957- ) US soldier and author whose Saga of the Unified Worlds sequence, beginning with Ganworld's Child (1991) as Diann Thornley, is a galaxy-spanning Space Opera focusing on the trials and exploits of Tristan Sergey, a seeming orphan who has a vital role in a Lebensraum war between humans and Aliens. After he and his parents are reunited, the saga continues, with ...
Moore, Gertrude L
(1886-1981) UK author, mother of Patrick Moore, whose work of sf interest is restricted to Mrs Moore in Space (graph 1974), a picture book for adults comprising a tour of the Solar System and beyond, in the course of which a "bogie" meets a wide range of Extraterrestrials, amicably. [JC]
Brown, John Young
(1856-1921) US educator and author. The protagonist of his sf novel, To the Moon and Back in Ninety Days: A Thrilling Narrative of Blended Science and Adventure (1922), hitches a ride on a Spaceship powered by Antigravity device to the Moon. The discovery of Selenites there turns out to be a hoax but the trip was real. The posthumous publication of the tale was arranged by residents of the ...
Jones, Peter
(1951- ) UK artist who, ignoring school careers advice to become "a North Sea Trawlerman", enrolled in London's Saint Martin's School of Art, graduating in 1974 and having his first cover art published that year. His Illustrations have the drama of the sf Pulps, with a lively use of colour and intriguing backgrounds – one of his earliest, for Christopher Stasheff's ...
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. He began to publish work of genre interest with an sf-tinged poem "Carcajou Lament" in Triquarterly for Winter 1960 [ie Autumn 1959]; he began consistently publishing sf reviews in his "New Fiction" column for the Toronto Star (1966-1967), and later in ...