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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 ...
Nickels, Thom
(? - ) US author of Walking Water/After All This (coll 1989), whose two tales are designed to test Gender issues in two radically different venus: the first is a Posthumous Fantasy [see The Encyclopedia of Fantasy under links below]; the second, set on Earth after a mysterious Disaster has depopulated the world, confronts ...
Hesky, Olga
(1912-1974) UK editor and author in whose wry and somewhat Surrealist sf novel, The Purple Armchair (1961), the Alien who resembles an armchair and is purple must decide whether or not the human race – caught in a near-future Dystopia dominated by Computers – should survive. Eventually the "chair" says no. [JC]
Borgese, Elisabeth Mann
(1918-2002) German-born scholar and author, daughter of Thomas Mann (1875-1955), in US from the 1930s, in Canada from 1979; as a central figure in the gradual evolution of international ocean law in the twentieth century, she provided cultural prestige to the campaign to preserve the world's oceans, wrote books fervently arguing the case that humans must take collective responsibility for them, and founded the International Ocean Institute in 1972. She won the Order of Canada in 1980. Her sf is ...
Gibson, Naomi
(1988- ) English author now in Scotland, whose first novel, the Young Adult Every Line of You (2021), traces the perhaps undue intimacy between its young protagonist and the boyfriend-like AI-powered Android she has created to help her solve a life crisis. Together they engage in some activities that seem dubiously legal. [JC]
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 ...