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 ...
Rocket Comics
US Comic (1940). Hillman-Curl, Inc. Three issues. Artists include Jack Alderman, Jack Cole and Maurice Gutwirth. Each issue had 7 strips plus one or two short pieces (text story and/or nonfiction). / Each issue opens with a serial, "The Runaway Rocket" featuring Rocket Riley, Prince of the Planets, employed as the pilot of Professor Sterling's experimental interplanetary rocket ships. One day the professor announces he has "discovered how to explode the ...
Hugi, Maurice G
(1904-1947) UK author who began publishing work of genre interest in 1934 with "Temple of Doom" (26 May 1934 Scoops) and "The Mines of Haldar" for (23 June 1934 Scoops); he is perhaps best known for "The Mechanical Mice" (January 1941 Astounding), which may have been written entirely by Eric Frank Russell; "The Mill of the Gods" (July 1946 ...
Frazer, Shamus
Working name of UK author James Ian Arbuthnot Frazer (1912-1966), whose first sf novel, Acorned Hog (1933), depicts a socialist Dystopia established in a Near Future Britain where the universities are closed and students sent back to the soil; by the end of the tale, however, a restored monarchy turns to a savage feudalism, with all industry peremptorily banned to America; the Satire is ...
Elson, Peter
(1947-1998) UK illustrator active during the 1980s and 1990s painting Hard SF covers depicting space hardware in the manner popularized by Chris Foss. He received his formal art education at Ealing Art College, then spent several years as a jobbing artist before, in 1975, winning an art competition mounted by the UK's Science Fiction Monthly. Thereafter, his sf cover art was very much in ...
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 ...