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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 ...
Dakron, Ron
Pseudonym of US poet and author Ronald J Christoffel (1953- ). His novel Hammers (1997) describes in a somewhat gonzo literary style the transformation of five characters into hammerhead sharks (see Biology). The novella Mantids (2008) is a darkly humorous updating of Petronius's Satyricon. [JC/SH]
Bruce, Stewart E
(? - ) US author on political issues from a leftwing point of view; his Utopia, The World in 1931 (1921) recklessly – in hindsight – suggests that the outcome of the bitterness and injustices that World War One intensified would be a pacific socialist commonwealth. [JC]
Absolute Magnitude
US Semiprozine, which began in Spring/Summer 1993, under the title Harsh Mistress; but that name – intended to echo Robert A Heinlein's novel The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress (December 1965-April 1966 If; 1966) – sounded like a bondage magazine to distributors, and the magazine was retitled (its numbering resuming with #1) with its third issue, ...
Obreht, Téa
(1985- ) Yugoslavia/Serbia-born author, in US from the age of twelve. Her birth name was Téa Bajraktarević; she took her grandfather's surname in 2006. Her first novel, The Tiger's Wife (2010), arguably replicating Obreht's closeness to her grandfather, is structured around the tales told a young doctor by her grandfather. These tales, featuring a man who does not die and a deaf-mute girl, dextrously interact with ...
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 ...