SF Encyclopedia Home Page
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
Sponsor of the day: Handheld Press
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 ...
Gaspar, Enrique
(1842-1902) Spanish diplomat, playwright and author, initially of zarzuelas, comic operettas with spoken dialogue in the French manner. He is of sf interest for the book-length "El anacronópete" (in Novelas, coll 1887; trans Yolanda Molina-Gavilán and Andrea Bell as The Time Ship: A Chrononautical Journey 2012) which, although it is not the first text to posit something like Time Travel, seems to be the first to describe ...
Ingpen, Robert
(1936- ) Australian artist, illustrator and author, active from the late 1950s; most of his work is nonfiction or fantasy, the latter usually for children; he has also illustrated a very wide range of titles. He is of sf interest for the Australian Gnomes sequence beginning with Australian Gnomes (1979), which won a 1980 Ditmar Award for best novel, though its narrative elements are presented in the form of a ...
John, Owen
(1918-1995) UK author, mostly of spy thrillers, whose Computer Takes All (1967) as by John Bourne visualizes a Dystopian outcome to the rise of the Computer; and whose Haggai Godin sequence sometimes comes close to sf, especially The Shadow in the Sea (1972), which ventures into Near Future territory in its description of a mysterious Russian submarine off the British ...
Anvil, Christopher
Pseudonym of US author Harry C Crosby Jr (1925-2009), whose two earliest stories were published under his own name: "Cinderella, Inc." (December 1952 Imagination) and "Roll Out the Rolov!" (November 1953 Imagination). Anvil has been popularly identified with Astounding since his initial appearance in that magazine with "The Prisoner" in February 1956. He soon followed with the first of the stories making up ...
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 ...