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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 ...
Cranford, Robin
(1923- ) South African author, later in the UK; My City Fears Tomorrow (1961), a non-fantastic tale set in Johannesburg, thematically precedes Leave Them Their Pride (1962), which is set in the same general venue in 1975, and deals with the Invasion of South Africa by freed Blacks, and the decision of those whites who survive to accept relegation to a small "homeland". [JC]
Dwyer, James Francis
(1874-1952) Australian author, imprisoned for committing forgery (1899-1902), in the US after 1907, in France after 1921; a prolific author of stories from 1902, sometimes as by Burglar Bill with the Sydney Bulletin, where he began publishing a huge stream of works; he eventually moved on as well to a wide range of magazines like Black Cat, Blue Book and Argosy. "The Phantom ...
Atomic Platters
The name – coined by Bill Geerhart at the Conelrad website [see links below] – for a short-lived sub-genre of 1940s and 1950s pop music concerned with an atomic World War Three and its aftermath (see Holocaust). Many, though not all, of the artists and songs that might be so classified fell into later obscurity, but this was in its day a fairly lively aural manifestation of the fascinations of ...
Wobig, Ellen
(1911-1989) US author whose sf novella, The Youth Monopoly (1968 dos) is set initially in a moderately distant Near Future where America has declined into a jumble of City-states run by petty tyrants; escaping Metropolis, the protagonist finds himself in a mysterious "pleasure resort" whose inhabitants are granted Immortality through regular Rejuvenation ...
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 ...