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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 ...
Darnton, John
(1941- ) US journalist and author, during whose career with the New York Times from 1966 until his retirement in 2005 he earned several prizes for his foreign affairs reporting, including a 1982 Pulitzer Prize. His first three novels are sf; in Neanderthal (1996), a Lost Race of Telepathic Neanderthals, bifurcated into peaceful and warlike segments, is discovered in far Tajikistan, deep in ...
Raffalovich, George
(1880-1958) French-born academic and author, in UK from around 1906 to 1915, when his advocacy of Ukrainian rights (sometimes as by Bedwin Sands) was deemed potentially treasonous; then in US. Of sf interest are two collections: Planetary Journeys and Earthly Sketches (coll 1908; vt On the Loose 1910), which includes four connected tales involving travel by Telepathy to other planets, where various forms of life (see ...
Mason, Anne
(1941- ) US author of a Young Adult sequence of sf novels, the Dancing Meteorite sequence comprising The Dancing Meteorite (1984) and The Stolen Law (1988), featuring a young Communications specialist whose easy rapport with Aliens is challenged by the lifeforms contained in the eponymous meteorite; the second volume carries the protagonist ...
Homer
(circa 800 BCE-circa 700 BCE) The most famous of early Greek poets, whether or not one or more individuals, or a guild of homers who recited poetry, and whose birth and death dates remain speculative; his or their birth and death may have occurred between the dates given above. Samuel Butler, in The Authoress of the Odyssey (1897), argued for female authorship of the Odyssey, and Robert ...
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 ...