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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 ...
Levin, Ira
(1929-2007) US playwright and author whose first book, A Kiss Before Dying (1953), is an extremely impressive chiller. He is best known for the horror tale Rosemary's Baby (1967), in which the Devil impregnates a young woman; the book was filmed by Roman Polanski as Rosemary's Baby (1968); the sequel, Son of Rosemary (1997), is weak. Levin moved into sf proper with This Perfect Day (1970), a ...
Horror Monsters
Letter-size saddle-stapled Cinema magazine printed on cheap newsprint. Published by Charlton Comics. Editor credited as "Sanzar Quasatood". Ten issues, 1961 to 1965. No regular publication schedule stated. / This title suffered from Charlton's usual low production values; it printed some short Horror fiction among the film and Television articles, although no ...
Hume, Fergus
(1859-1932) UK lawyer and author raised in New Zealand from the age of three until 1885, then in Australia for three years, finally back in the UK from 1888, after the detective novel The Mystery of a Hansom Cab (1886) made his name, though not his fortune, as he had sold all rights for fifty pounds before its success; along with some later books with fantastic elements, the novel is examined in Blockbuster!: Fergus Hume and the Mystery of a Hansom Cab (2015) by Lucy ...
Emrys, Ruthanna
(? - ) US author, who began to publish work of genre interest with "Exposure Therapy" in Analog for January-February 2007; it has been assembled with several other stories as Imperfect Commentaries (2019). In her first series, the Near Future Innsmouth Legacy sequence beginning with The Litany of Earth (14 May 2014 Tor.com; 2014 ...
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 ...