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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 ...
Slick
A term that emerged in the 1930s, originally as "slick-paper magazine" to distinguish what many regarded as the quality magazines from the Pulps. The slicks were also known as the "heavies" or "glossies", because they were printed on coated stock to allow better reproduction of photographs, as much for advertisements as for the editorial content, which made each individual issue considerably heavier than a pulp. The "glossies" had been around for far longer than the ...
Kon Satoshi
(1963-2010) Japanese Manga artist and Anime director whose brief career produced several landmark works questioning human Perception of reality (see also Metaphysics). Kon became an art assistant to Katsuhiro Ōtomo while still a student at Musashino Arts University, and was acclaimed for his early manga work Toriko ["Captive"] (1984 ...
Scott-Moncrieff, D
(1907-1987) UK vintage car restorer and author, who hyphenated his surname for his books, which included some nonfiction. In Not for the Squeamish (coll 1948), the first of his two volumes of stories, of direct sf interest is "Count Szolnok's Robots", in which Robots are terminally evil, with several other tales edge into the realms of Gothic SF; his second collection, The Vaivaisukko's Bride (coll 1949 ...
Muir, Willa
(1890-1970) Scottish poet, translator and author, most of whose translations, like those of Franz Kafka, were done in collaboration with her husband Edwin Muir [who see for further details]; she also published some solo translations as by Agnes Neill Scott. It has been plausibly argued that she was the senior figure in the Muirs' career as translators, certainly on grounds of technical facility. On the basis of their ...
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 ...