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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 ...
Elliott, Kate
Pseudonym of US author Alis A Rasmussen (1958- ), who has written as Kate Elliott since 1992. Under her own name, her first novel, The Labyrinth Gate (1988), is a tale of considerable interest, delineating a believably matrilineal fantasy world. The Highroad Trilogy – comprising A Passage of Stars (1990), Revolution's Shore (1990) and The Price of Ransom (1990) – depicts the interstellar adventures ...
Seidenberg, Roderick
(1889-1973) German-born architect and author, in USA from 1910 or earlier; imprisoned 1918-1920 as a World War One conscientious objector. In the 1930s, while designing several buildings in New York, he also contributed essays to various journals. His first book, Posthistoric Man: An Inquiry (1950), incisively if adamantly argues that human history in the large scale is essentially predetermined, and can be graphed as a three-part sequence: ...
Evil Genius
Videogame (2004). Elixir Studios. Designed by Demis Hassabis, Sandro Sammarco. Platforms: Win. / Evil Genius is a God Game which serves as a gentle, good-humoured parody of such science-fictional "superspy" films and television programmes as Moonraker (1979) and The Avengers (1961-1969). Within ...
Keshishian, John M
(1923-2021) Greek-born surgeon, academic, archaeologist and author, in US from 1931, whose Near Future sf novel, with Jacob Hay (whom see for details), is Autopsy for a Cosmonaut (1969; vt Death of a Cosmonaut 1970). The Mayan Shard Caper (2006) focuses on the speculative assumption that there may have been a second Mayan race, perhaps distinct in some ways from Homo sapiens. [JC]
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 ...