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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 ...
Campbell, H J
(1925-1983) UK research chemist (a Fellow of the Chemical Society), author and editor. He was active in Fandom during the early 1950s as Bert Campbell. After writing some science articles he gradually branched out into the world of sf, as well as selling line drawings to many magazines, including Amateur Photographer and Television Weekly. He scripted the Daily Herald cartoon series Captain Universe and served as technical editor and then ...
Wheeler, Francis
(1904-1969) UK author, mostly of thrillers, though as Francis Leslie Wheeler he published several volumes of popular Christian theology. His Sylvanian Adventure (1939) has some sf interest as a Ruritanian tale set in a hidden, heavily forested kingdom dangerously close to the outbreak of World War Two. [JC]
Sun Ra
(1914-1993) US jazz composer and musician, born Herman Poole Blount. Sun Ra played and released a large quantity of music, mostly in the postwar period, all of it inflected by his fascination with outer space, Alien encounter, Ancient Egypt (whose Sun god inspired his working name) and Atlantis. / Ra spent the 1950s mostly recording in Chicago. In 1961 he moved to New ...
Nagpal, Veena
(1942- ) Indian author of Adventure in Space; And, the Time Travellers (coll 1967 India), in which Space Opera and Time Travel conventions are adapted, perhaps not vigorously enough, to her native venue. [JC]
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 ...