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 ...
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 ...
Finn, Ralph L
(1912-1999) UK author and journalist who published widely, collecting some of his short fiction as Collected Stories of Ralph L Finn (coll 1946 chap); in his notes on "This Sorry Scheme" (magazine publication undated), George Locke suggests that the tale prefigures Jack Finney's far more complex Time and Again (1970). Of some sf interest are three novels based on the time theories of J W ...
Ball, F N
(?1909-? ) UK author of a Utopia, Metatopia (1961), featuring population control and meritocratic focus on the university system as the best source of good governance. [JC]
Baker, Frank
(1908-1983) UK actor, Television scriptwriter and author whose work is generally and correctly thought of in terms of fantasy and horror, though his second novel, The Birds (1936; rev 1964; rev 2013), is very clearly Equipoisal between Scientific Romance and Supernatural Fiction [see The Encyclopedia of Fantasy ...
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 ...