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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.
Site updated on 25 July 2024
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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 ...
Watson, J C
(? - ) South African author of Shadow Over the Rand: A South African Novel (1955), an sf novel set in the very Near Future in Johannesburg as a Pandemic caused by a strange "virus tuberculosis" comes close to destroying first the city (where the death toll nears 50%) then the country. But a research doctor develops a vaccine (see Medicine). The plague ...
Hasson, Guy
(1971- ) Israeli author, playwright and film-maker who began his career with Hebrew-language plays, but writes science fiction almost exclusively in English. Perhaps confusingly, much of his output appeared first in Hebrew translations. Hasson began publishing with "Earth Calling Johnny" in Anotherealm (see Online Magazines) for 1998. He published short fiction in online ...
Palmer, Jessica
(1953- ) US journalist and author of two fantasy series – Dark Lullaby and Renegade World, see Checklist for titles – and the Space Opera Factor sequence, comprising Random Factor (1994), Human Factor (1996) and Random Factor (1997), about a cruel war fought in interstellar space by opposing forces of Clones governed by a central ...
Bird, William Henry Fleming
(1896-1971) UK art lecturer and author who published some magazine sf in the 1950s under his own name, and also as John Toucan and John Eagle. His debut story was "War Potential" (October 1952 Tales of Tomorrow) as by John Toucan, and the first under his own name was "Critical Age" (1953 Futuristic Science Stories #12). Later work was almost exclusively written for the firm of ...
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 ...