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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 ...
Stewart, Alex
(1958- ) UK editor and author, whose recent fiction has been as by Sandy Mitchell; he began publishing sf with "Seasons Out of Time" for Interzone in Summer 1982, but was initially most active as an editor. Solo he edited Arrows of Eros: Unearthly Tales of Love and Death (anth 1989); with Neil Gaiman he edited the Shared World anthology, Temps (anth ...
Cummings, M A
Working name of Mona A Cummings (1914-1999), US author of romances as Monette Cummings, and of short stories in various genres, her work of genre interest beginning with "The Brides of Ool" in Planet Stories in 1955. Her collection is Exile and Other Tales of Fantasy (coll 1968), which contains some Planetary Romances. [JC]
Herbert, Benson
(1912-1991) UK editor and author with a master's degree in science who began publishing sf in US magazines with "The World Without" for Wonder Stories in February 1931 and was fairly active in the 1930s. Crisis! – 1992 (October 1935-January/February 1936 Wonder Stories as "The Perfect World"; 1936), with an introduction by M P Shiel, deals with the ominous passage of ...
Fox, Gardner F
(1911-1986) US lawyer and author, who began writing in 1937 for DC Comics, including Superman. Arguably his most important work was for Comics: though it is claimed that he published at least 160 books under various names – not all are given here; some are Westerns with fantastic elements – this total pales beside his 4000 or more comic-book stories, also ...
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 ...