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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 ...
Barnes, James
(1866-1936) US author, mostly on nautical themes for Young Adult readers, whose sf novel, The Unpardonable War (1904), is an Edisonade in which – after war between Britain and America has been incited because America wishes to free Ireland and to annex Canada – the scientific genius Westland, "the Wizard of Staten Island", invents a device which explodes the enemy's gunpowder. America then takes the lead in ...
Roenbeck, Patricia
(? - ) US author of the romantic Space Opera Golden sequence beginning with Golden Temptress (1991), which follows the erotic adventures of a shipwrecked young woman on a Starship representing the local Galactic Empire. [JC]
Portwin, E T
(1912-2006) UK publisher and author, born Portwine (name changed legally), who sometimes wrote as by Elizabeth Portwin, his wife's name; as he normally signed his books E T Portwin, some confusion ensued. His books, which are Children's SF, begin with The Boy in the Moon (1945 chap) as by Elizabeth Portwin; of greatest interest is Death Swamp and Other Adventure Stories (coll 1946), whose title novella dramatizes the almost fatal ...
Conklin, Groff
(1904-1968) US editor who began his career as manager of Doubleday Book Stores 1930-1934, and who intermittently held various editing positions, in and out of commercial publishing, for the rest of his life; he was, however, primarily a freelance. The first of his many sf Anthologies was The Best of Science Fiction (anth 1946; vt The Golden Age of Science Fiction 1980), a huge compendium which vied in size and potential influence 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 ...