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.
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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 ...
Kealing, Ethel Black
(1877-1960) US poet and author of one Lost Race novel, Desra of the Egyptians: A Romance of the Earlier Centuries (1910); it is set in Egypt. [JC]
Billett, Mabel Broughton
(1892-1964) Canadian author, in USA from 1936; of her four detective novels, one is of some sf interest. In The Robot Detective (1932), an immobile Robot, fed information through punch-cards (and better perhaps described as a primitive Computer), discusses a case with his/its human operator, who then goes out into the British Columbia landscape to capture the villain. Her fourth novel, "The Smooth Silence" (1936 ...
Dragt, Tonke
Working name of Dutch East Indies-born illustrator and author Antonia Johanna Dragt (1930- ), in The Netherlands after 1945; most of her work, much of it sf or fantasy, is designed for Young Adult readers, including her best known work, the Dragonaut series including De brief voor de koning ["The Letter for the King"] (1962) and Geheimen van het Wilde Woud ["Secrets of the Wild Wood"] (1965), a fantasy ...
Moberg, Vilhelm
(1898-1973) Swedish playwright, nonfiction writer and author who published 18 novels, 38 stage or radio plays and 21 nonfiction books, four of them issued posthumously; he is most famous for his historical novels, perhaps primarily for his four-volume series The Emigrants (1949-1959; trans as The Emigrants, Unto a Good Land, The Settlers, and The Last Letter Home 1956-1959), following a group of Swedish ...
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 ...