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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 ...
Rathbone, Julian
(1935-2008) UK author – a great-nephew of the actor Basil Rathbone (1892-1967) – who concentrated almost exclusively on detective and historical fiction, but whose Trajectories (1998) is a movingly deracinated take on the UK of 2035, a Dystopia in which ethnic minorities are oppressed, travel restricted, and all media are under the control of central government (see Media Landscape). That this portrait ...
Science Fantasy [magazine]
1. UK Digest-size magazine published from Summer 1950 by Nova Publications as a companion to New Worlds; subsequently taken over by Roberts & Vinter in June/July 1964, thereafter in a pocketbook format. 81 issues appeared as Science Fantasy Summer 1950 to February 1966, and twelve more March 1966 to February 1967 as Impulse (March-July 1966) and SF Impulse (August 1966-February 1967). Issues #1 and #2 ...
O'Grady, Standish James
(1846-1928) Irish editor, controversialist and author, whose opinions straddled (and were an irritant to) a large range of opinion about the fate of Ireland. His works of history being unpopular for reason of contentiousness, he created a thematically connected array of novels, beginning with Finn and His Companions (1891) (a tale for children) and The Coming of Cuculain: A Romance of the Heroic Age of Ireland (1894), in all of which the history of Ireland is recast ...
Braswell, Liz
(? - ) UK-born Videogame producer and author, in America from childhood; known for her series under various pseudonyms, which include Tracy Lynn, J B Stephens, Celia Thomson and the House Name Robb Kidd. Of greatest sf interest is the Big Empty sequence, all as by J B Stephens, and beginning with The Big Empty (2004), a Young Adult series ...
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 ...