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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 ...
Dorn, Michael
(1952- ) US actor – in various Star Trek series and one film, and elsewhere – and author of an sf novel, Time Blender (1997) with Hilary Hemingway and Jeffry P Lindsay, whose title accurately describes the consequences of an archaeologist's discovery of a time portal (see Timeslip) in which various epochs come ...
Whittemore, Edward
(1933-1995) US case officer for the CIA 1958-1987, specializing in Asia and the Middle East (where much of the action in his novels takes place), and author whose first novel, Quin's Shanghai Circus (1974), serves as a rampageous, gonzo prelude (see Horror in SF) to the rest of his small oeuvre. Fairly clearly influenced by authors like Thomas Pynchon, and perhaps Richard ...
Organlegging
A virtually self-defining sf term based on "bootlegging" and denoting the illicit acquisition of and dealing in human organs and other bodily parts. It was coined by Larry Niven in early stories of his Known Space series, in particular those collected in The Long ARM of Gil Hamilton (coll 1976), beginning with "The Organleggers" (January 1969 Galaxy; vt "Death by Ecstasy" in The Shape of Space, coll ...
Killiany, Kevin
(? - ) US author who began publishing work of genre interest with a tale Tied to the Star Trek universe, "Personal Log" in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds IV (anth 2001) ed Dean Wesley Smith, John J Ordover and Paula M Block; his two Ties to the MechWarrior subdivision of the Battletech ...
Clute, John
(1940- ) Canadian critic, editor and author, in the UK from 1969; married to Judith Clute from 1964, partner of Elizabeth Hand since 1996. He began to publish work of genre interest with an sf-tinged poem "Carcajou Lament" in Triquarterly for Winter 1960 [ie Autumn 1959]; he began consistently publishing sf reviews in his "New Fiction" column for the Toronto Star (1966-1967), and later in ...