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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 ...
Ellis, Havelock
(1859-1939) UK author, known as a Feminist, a socialist, and as an unprecedentedly frank (and learned) student of the sexual nature of our species (see Sex), most famously through Studies in the Psychology of Sex (1897-1910 6vols), which argues that our sexual natures are essentially innate, including homosexuality. He was a controversial figure for most of his life, though The Dance of Life (1923) was ...
Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask)
Film (1972). Jack Rollins and Charles H Joffe Productions/United Artists. Directed by Woody Allen. Written by Allen, based on or rather suggested by the nonfiction Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Sex, But Were Afraid to Ask (1969) by David Reuben. Cast includes Allen, John Carradine, Louise Lasser, Tony Randall, Burt Reynolds and Gene Wilder. 88 minutes. Colour. / This engaging collection of filmed anecdotes satirizes various ...
Blaine, John
Pseudonym of US author Harold Leland Goodwin (1914-1990) who specialized in sf-adventure novels for teenage readers. His books tended to emphasize the nuts and bolts of science and technology, and were more carefully written than most series books for teens. As Blake Savage he also wrote an sf novel for teens, Rip Foster Rides the Gray Planet (1952; vt Assignment in Space with Rip Foster 1958; vt Rip Foster in Ride the Gray Planet 1969). The protagonist ...
Nuclear Energy
The claim that sf is a realistic, extrapolative literature is often supported by the citing of successful Predictions, among which atomic power and the atom bomb are usually given pride of place. When the news of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was released in 1945, John W Campbell Jr, editor of Astounding Science-Fiction, was exultant, claiming that now sf would have to be taken seriously. ...
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 ...