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
Sponsor of the day: Handheld Press
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 ...
Bair, Patrick
Pseudonym of UK author David Groom (? - ), whose Faster! Faster! (1950) is a Dystopian fable with an sf flavour in which representatives of three classes, caught on a train which goes on for ever, must work out their destinies; its abstract nature differentiates the tale from his later work, though Gargantua Falls (1951) places very similar Satirical points in an only ...
Johnson, Edgar
(1912-1990) US ceramic artist and author, for whose works of sf interest in collaboration with his wife Annabel Johnson, see her entry. Johnson should not to be confused with Edgar Johnson (1901-1972), an earlier novelist. [JC]
Balfour, Bruce
(?1958- ) US Comics author, computer games designer from the 1980s, and author who began publishing fiction of genre interest with "Thunder Pigeon" for Fantasy Book in June 1985. In comics, he is perhaps best known for Jack the Ripper (October 1989-February 1990 Eternity Comics; graph 1990) illustrated Paul Mendoza, and for writing Keith Laumer's Retief (December 1989-October 1990 ...
Wells, Jess
(1955- ) US author whose fiction has generally been nonfantastic; she began to publish work of genre interest with "The Succubus" in Embracing the Dark (anth 1991) edited by Eric Garber. Her sf novel, AfterShocks (1992), is set in Near Future San Francisco (see California), where the effects of a devastating earthquake (see Disaster) are played out ...
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 ...