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 ...
Crane, Nathalia
(1913-1998) US poet, teacher and author, precociously active as a poet from childhood, beginning with the publication of her first collection, The Janitor's Boy and Other Poems (coll 1924 chap), which was much influenced by Emily Dickinson (1830-1886); Time magazine referred to her at this time as "The Baby Browning of Brooklyn". After publishing some further work she enjoyed a long career as an academic and political activist. Samuel R ...
Morris, Henry O
(1858-? ) US author of a Near Future tale of social discontent and revolution, Waiting for the Signal (1897), which climaxes in a benevolent secret society's successful overthrow of the plutocrats of America. [JC]
Seaborn, Adam
Pseudonym of the unidentified author of the well-written Symzonia: A Voyage of Discovery (1820), which sets a Utopia inside a Hollow Earth, and which contains some good-tempered Satire of America aboveground. Some commentators – including J O Bailey, who edited a 1965 facsimile edition of the original text – have assumed Seaborn to have been Captain ...
Cole, Cyrus
(? -? ) US author. In his eccentrically interesting The Auroraphone: A Romance (1890), messages from a sentient being on Saturn are received on the eponymous instrument, an Invention designed to pick up "sound-signs" from almost anywhere; life on Saturn is Utopian in many ways, although a Robot revolt flares up – one of the first of many in sf, the most ...
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 ...