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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 ...
Steelbaugh, Larry
(? - ) US author of the Tankwar sequence beginning with Tankwar (1990) and ending with Tankwar: Desert Prey (1993), a series of Military SF tales set during World War Three, with a Technothriller focus on tank Technology. Nothing is known of Steelbaugh; the name may be a pseudonym. ...
Meltzer, David
(1937-2016) US jazz guitarist, poet and author whose sf is almost entirely restricted to two sequences of erotic novels published by Essex House at the end of the 1960s, though he had published a very few stories earlier. The first sequence – the Agency series comprising The Agency (1968), The Agent (1968) and How Many Blocks in the Pile? (1969), all three assembled as The Agency Trilogy (omni ...
Paltock, Robert
(1697-1767) UK lawyer and author, known almost solely for what was probably his only work of fiction, The Life and Adventures of Peter Wilkins, a Cornish Man: Relating Particularly his Shipwreck Near the South Pole; his Wonderful Passage Thro' a Subterranean Cavern into a Kind of New World [for full subtitle see Checklist] (dated 1751 but 1750 2vols), an example of Proto SF that, after half a century of neglect, became almost as well known in the ...
Miles, Charles A
(? - ) US author whose sf novel of Space Flight is Argosy: The Imaginary Memoirs of an Astronaut (1961). [JC/DRL]
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 ...