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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 ...
Curval, Philippe
Pseudonym of French author, journalist and artist Philippe Tronche (1929-2023). From around 1956 Curval was central to the growth of sf in France as bookseller, magazine editor, photographer, chronicler and author. He was a fine stylist whose works, though often they are couched as Satires, are exemplified by a sensual, poetic mood and great affection for his characters. He wrote over thirty stories, beginning with "L'oeuf d'Elduo" ...
Marfax, Clyde
Author (? - ), perhaps pseudonymous, of whom nothing is known beyond the appearance of this byline on the unremarkable Planets of Peril (1954 chap), #4 in the shortlived Fantastic Science Thriller pocketbook series. Marfax has sometimes been identified as a pseudonym of the woman who wrote as Erroll Collins, but stylistic evidence suggests otherwise. ...
Pendexter, Hugh
(1875-1940) US author, mainly of Westerns for boys, though his first book, Tiberius Smith: As Chronicled by his Right-Hand Man Billy Campbell (coll of linked stories 1907), assembles a series of tales about Smith, beginning with "A Corner in Jurisdiction" (17 June 1905 Saturday Evening Post). The stories recount his exorbitant adventures as a big game hunter, who utilizes spoof ...
Most Dangerous Game, The
Film (1932; vt Hounds of Zaroff). RKO Radio Pictures. Directed by Merian C Cooper and Ernest B Schoedsack. Written by James Ashmore Creelman, based on "The Most Dangerous Game" (19 January 1924 Collier's Weekly) by Richard Connell. Cast includes Robert Armstrong, Leslie Banks, Noble Johnson, Joel McCrea and Fay Wray. 61 minutes. Black and white. / A luxury yacht is lured onto rocks and sinks; the only ...
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 ...