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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 ...
McKay, Herbert
(? -? ) UK author of A Camouflage Revolution (1929), in which the threat of a clandestine communist takeover of Great Britain is set in the Near Future. [JC]
Holcombe, Wm H
(1825-1893) US medical doctor and author, most of whose works are nonfiction expositions of homeopathy and the philosophy of Emanuel Swedenborg. His sf novel, A Mystery of New Orleans: Solved by New Methods (1890), perhaps influenced by his primary interests, describes the successful efforts of the mesmerist Dr Hypolite Meissonier to exercise long-distance Hypnotic control over his subjects. [JC]
Snell, Gordon
(? - ) UK broadcaster, screenwriter and author, mostly for younger children; for a youngish Young Adult market he published an sf series, the undemanding Tom's Amazing Machine sequence beginning with Tom's Amazing Machine (1988), and featuring a talking Computer named Zenda. [JC]
Biagi, L D
Working name of US author Lottie Biagi (circa 1872-? ); the surname is that of her first husband (married circa 1890), and she later became Lottie F Ambrose on her second marriage in 1912. Her Two Heroes and a Violin: An Extravaganza (1899) is a supernatural fiction. The protagonist of her sf novel The Centaurians (1911) travels with his Scientist friend in a torpedo-like ship of the latter's ...
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 ...