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
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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 ...
Aymé, Marcel
(1902-1967) French author and dramatist, not generally thought of as a contributor to the sf field, though several of his best-known novels, such as La jument verte (1933; appalling anonymous trans as The Green Mare 1938; new trans Norman Denny 1955), are fantasies, usually with a satirical point to make about provincial French life. La belle image (1941; trans Norman Denny as The Second Face 1951; new trans Sophie Lewis ...
Wintle, Harold
(1870-1941) UK journalist and author whose The Cleansing of the "Lords" (1906) verges non-mimetic Politics in its depiction of the British government's apparent involvement in an ivory trade trust; Until That Day (1912) suggests that a dysfunctional Near Future Britain might return to sanity with the restoration of the monarchy; The Masked Battery (1927) is a fantasy about a magic spring ...
Vidal, Gore
(1925-2012) US playwright, screenwriter, journalist and author, from the 1950s until 2003 resident in Italy, active from around 1945; though most of his work was nonfantastic, he is of interest in the context of this encyclopedia for a surprising range of works of the fantastic, exhibiting a cavalier intimacy with his material that makes it hard to think of him as a Mainstream Writer of SF. He is also of interest for several volumes of essays, ...
Lundwall, Sam J
(1941- ) Swedish author, editor, critic, translator and publisher who has also periodically worked as a singer/songwriter, Television producer, photographer and cartoonist. Lundwall is the pre-eminent figure in Swedish sf. At the age of eleven, he had a short play performed on a children's show on Swedish national Radio. In 1956, he became active in Swedish sf ...
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 ...