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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.
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 ...
Blair, Andrew
(1849-1885) Scottish medical doctor and author whose Future History, Annals of the Twenty-Ninth Century; Or, The Autobiography of the Tenth President of the World Republic (1874 3vols) anonymous, celebrates, at times quite exuberantly, the rapid advance of science on Earth and the complete ecospheric control of the planet. In the second and third volumes, the protagonist of the narrative undertakes a trip to the Moon, ...
Faust, Minister
Pseudonym of Canadian radio host (most famously of Terrordome, a news/comment programme focusing on issues affecting Black Canadians), politician, controversialist and author Malcolm Azania (1969- ) whose first novel, The Coyote Kings of the Space-Age Bachelor Pad (2004), combines Recursive SF elements with material also taken from fantasy and horror – some of this material being derived from books, but much of ...
Harrison, Michael
Pseudonym of UK author Maurice Desmond Rohan (1907-1991) for work in various genres, mostly not sf. He wrote an early film novelization, The Bride of Frankenstein (1936) as by Michael Egremont, and some of the stories assembled in Transit of Venus (coll 1936) are of fantasy interest. His first and most interesting sf novel, Higher Things (1945), is a Scientific Romance clearly influenced by H G ...
Creasey, John
(1908-1973) UK author, publisher and literary agent who began writing for the Boys' Papers in 1926, turning to adult thrillers in 1932. He wrote 562 books under (it is widely reported) 28 pseudonyms, but it is doubtful if all were exclusively by him (Michael Moorcock was at one time approached to do writing for him). Like George Griffith with his Future-War ...
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 ...