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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 ...
Phillips, Alexander M
(1907-1991) US author and long-time sf fan, based in Philadelphia, who wrote a small body of science fiction, fantasy and nonfiction. He was a technical writer and draughtsman as well as an amateur naturalist and photographer. His first professionally published story was "The Death of the Moon" (February 1929 Amazing), in which advanced Aliens from the Moon attempt to conquer Earth in the ...
Ludlum, Robert
(1927-2001) US stage and television actor, theatrical producer and author whose first novel, The Scarlatti Inheritance (1971), skirts the actual fantastic, as do most of his Technothrillers; in this case, the eponymous millionaire, in his search for world influence, surgically transforms himself into an intimate of Adolf Hitler named Heinrich Kroeger. The Gemini Contenders (1976), about a secret document claiming that Jesus ...
Arkham Horror
Board Game (1987). Chaosium; second edition Fantasy Flight (2005). Designed by Richard Launius, Lynn Willis and Charlie Krank. / Arkham Horror is a cooperative board game with role-playing elements, based on the Cthulhu Mythos associated with the stories of H P Lovecraft. The players take the role of investigators exploring the town of Arkham, who must seal ...
Dick-Lauder, George
(1917-1981) British Army officer who served in World War Two, and began a writing career after his retirement from the service, his first work of genre interest being "Missionary Stew" for Blackwoods in 1960. His two sf novels, Our Man for Ganymede (1969) and A Skull and Two Crystals (1972), though not innovative, do explore the conventions of Space Opera in a manner both literate and alert. [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 ...