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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 ...
Kippax, John
Pseudonym of UK author John Charles Hynam (1915-1974), a regular contributor to the UK sf magazines during 1955-1961, publishing over thirty stories in that time, only one under his own name; two appeared as by Julian Frey. Several Kippax stories appeared elsewhere, as did much generally non-genre material as by Hynam (John, Joan or Jane) or Frey. His first two stories appeared in December 1954: "Dimple" in Science Fantasy and "Trojan Hearse" in ...
Sturgeon's Law
An aphorism formulated by Theodore Sturgeon in the early 1950s: "Ninety percent of everything is crud." This needs to be placed in context as his response to blanket condemnations of sf which were based on the worst examples of the genre. According to James Gunn, Sturgeon's Law originated in a Sturgeon talk at the 1953 Worldcon, and was phrased approximately as ...
Armour, R Coutts
(1874-1945) Australian author, who wrote popular fiction, mostly for magazines, under his own name and under various pseudonyms, including Coutts Brisbane, Pierre Quiroule (a probable House Name), Hartley Tremayne, Reid Whitley (or Whitly), and other names not yet discovered; his career extended from before World War One until at least the late 1930s in sf and continued into the early 1940s in ...
France, Anatole
Working name of Jacques Anatole-François Thibault (1844-1924), French author active from the early 1860s until his death; he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1921. His essayistic "pagan" Satires seem perhaps less relevant now than formerly, their amused rationality failing to bite with sufficient savagery into targets like official religion and sexual prudery. Of sf interest are Sur la pierre blanche (1904 ...
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 ...