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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 ...
Fuller, Sam
(1912-1997) US screenwriter, director and author, variously active from the mid 1930s, most famous for his thirty films as director beginning with I Shot Jesse James (1947). He is of sf interest for his second novel, Test Tube Baby (1936), whose protagonist, a scientific prodigy, may have devised an experiment which successfully creates life in a test tube. But his life divides into two incompatible parts, the scientist and the lover; so violent are the transitions ...
Mills, Samantha
(?- ) US author of speculative fiction who began to publish work of genre interest with "The Gestational Cycle of Flies in a Cupboard" in LampLight for March 2018. Her work has since appeared in several publications, including Strange Horizons, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and Uncanny. "Rabbit Test" (November/December 2022 ...
Didier de Chousy, Comte
Possibly the pseudonym of the unidentified French author (? -? ) of Ignis (1883 anonymous; rev 1884 as by Le Cte Didier de Chousy), an exorbitant Scientific Romance whose use of Hollow Earth topoi seems to have been drawn from Jules Verne's Voyage au centre de la Terre (1864; first trans as ...
Poyer, Joe
Working name of US author Joseph John Poyer (1939-2018) for his fiction, beginning with "Mission 'Red Clash'" in Analog for December 1965, Analog being a magazine with which he was closely associated. Of his novels, Operation Malacca (1968), about the use of talking dolphins for military purposes, and North Cape (1969) are Technothrillers. Tunnel War (1979) is an ...
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 ...