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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 ...
Attack Vector: Tactical
Cardboard models-based Wargame (2004). Ad Astra Games. Designed by Ken Burnside, Eric Finley, Tony Valle. / Attack Vector is a rare example of a game which, like Battlefleet Mars (1977) and Independence War: The Starship Simulator (1997), approaches space combat in a physically realistic way. Newtonian mechanics and accurate analyses of ...
Outcast
Videogame (1999). Appeal. Platforms: Win. / Outcast is a three-dimensional action Adventure game normally played in a third person view, which is notable for the ethereal, otherworldly beauty of its visuals. The game begins after a probe sent to a Parallel World has malfunctioned, creating a hole in space which threatens to destroy the Earth within weeks. The player adopts the role ...
Lauria, Frank
(1935-2022) US author who began to publish work of genre interest with Doctor Orient (1970), opening the Dr Owen Orient sequence of occult thrillers in urban-fantasy vein, in which the eponymous investigator – gifted with Psi Powers – tangles with such expected menaces as Vampires, voodoo, Werewolves and Zombies, these threats often taking ...
Gandon, Yves
(1899-1975) French author. His Le dernier Blanc (1945; trans A M as The Last White Man 1948) depicts, on familiar lines, the chemical warfare of the future featuring a toxin deadly only to whites (see Race in SF). Other sf works include Après les hommes ["After Men"] (1963), involving an ethical ferromagnetic race in the Far Future, and La ville invisible ["The Invisible Town"] ...
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 ...