SF Encyclopedia Home Page
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.
Site updated on 25 July 2024
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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 ...
Gong
Rock band, identified as French although they were founded by Australian Daevid Allen (1938-2015) and have included English and American as well as French members. Allen had been working in London in the late 1960s but, temporarily denied a visa, relocated to Paris and formed Gong with his partner, Gilli Smith (1933- ). The group's first album Magick Brother/Mystic Sister (1970) has a rather fairy, and indeed airy-fairy, vibe, inaugurating in rudimentary ...
Palmer, Raymond A
(1910-1977) US author and editor. His childhood was plagued by serious accidents including one that crushed his spine: in adulthood, as a consequence, he stood less than five feet tall and was hunchbacked, though he never allowed physical stress to affect his career. He was an active sf fan from the late 1920s, together with Walter Dennis creating the Science Correspondence Club (or SCC) in early 1929 with the express purpose of uniting the growing number of small local science/sf fan clubs ...
McDowell, Emmett
(1914-1975) US author who also wrote as Robert E McDowell, beginning his career after service in World War Two with The Happy Castaway (Spring 1945 Planet Stories; 2020 ebook). His work as author in other genres is various; he published several mystery novels, beginning with Switcheroo (1954 dos), none listed here, and as an historian specialized in regional studies of Kentucky. In his sf – ...
Race in SF
Racial matters have long been a very highly charged category of Politics. Early science-fictional discussion of the problems of race relations would often distance the issues by a metaphorical transfer to the imaginary or Alien societies of Lost Worlds and other planets, since serious speculation tended to be swamped by anxious fantasies – notably the spectre of the ...
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 ...