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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 ...
Van Stry, John
(? - ) US author, who also writes as by Jan Stryvant; beginning to publish work of genre interest with "Changes" in Yarf!: The Journal of Applied Anthropomorphics for December 1997. For most of his early career he focused on fantasy series like the long Valens Legacy sequence beginning with Black Friday (2017 ) as by Jan Stryvant [this series and others under this name are not listed in Checklist below]. Van Stry is of sf ...
Grimshaw, Robert
(1850-1941) US engineer, inventor and author, much of whose output consists of manuals, including The Locomotive Catechism (1891); his one work of sf interest, Fifty Years Hence: Or What May Be in 1943: A Prophecy Supposed to Be Based on Scientific Deduction by an Improved Graphical Method (1892), is a fictionalized account of a complicated graphic Prediction calculator, by which it is possible to determine that America in 1943 will be ...
Enright, D J
(1920-2002) UK poet, academic, critic and author; he was given an OBE in 1991. Most of his work has no fantastic content, though Heaven Knows Where (1957) Satirizes with a fairly soft brush the attempts of some British academics to construct a Utopia in an Island venue. Of more direct interest is the Atlantis series of Young Adult novels – ...
Stevenson, Chris
(? - ) US author whose Planet Janitor sequence of Space Operas, beginning with Planet Janitor: Custodian of the Stars (2012), features the harum-scarum adventures of the eponymous disposal firm in the solar system, and beyond, where First Contact is achieved with exaggeratedly dangerous Aliens. The Girl They Sold to the Moon ...
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 ...