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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 ...
Computers
The computer revolution transformed the real world so rapidly that sf had to struggle hard to keep up with actual developments. Although Charles Babbage's attempts to develop a mechanical computer have lately attracted attention in such Steampunk novels as The Difference Engine (1990) by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling, they failed to inspire ...
Bedford-Jones, H
(1887-1949) Canadian-born author, mostly in the US from the turn of the century, later a naturalized US citizen, one of the most prolific and popular pulp writers over the course of his professional career (circa 1910-1949); of his approximately 1200 short stories, at least 10% were fantasy, Pulp sf or horror; and of his nearly 100 novels, several – e.g., The Star Woman (1924), set in Canada during the fur-trading territorial disputes of the ...
Ellis, T Mullett
(1850-1919) UK architect, politician, poet and author of various works, two being of sf interest. Reveries of World History: From Earth's Nebulous Origin to its Final Ruin; Or, the Romance of a Star (1893) is an elated quasi-fictional text evocative of the work of Camille Flammarion; in his Spectrum of Fantasy 2 (1994), George Locke argues for its relevance as an sf "prose poem". Mullet's sf ...
Will, John N
(? - ) Probably US author of the novella-length My Blond Princess of Space (1968 chap). [JC/DRL]
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 ...