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.
Site updated on 25 July 2024
Sponsor of the day: The League of Fan Funds
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 ...
Parkman, Sydney
(1895-1995) UK author, usually of tales adventure, but including two humorous sf tales, Ship Ashore (1936), in which the descendants of a seventeenth-century shipwreck are found on a mysterious Island off the coast of Borneo, and Life Begins Tomorrow (1947), the latter set in the Near Future. [JC]
Di Filippo, Paul
(1954- ) US author whose birth and continued residence in Rhode Island places him at the heart of the Boston-Washington megalopolis (see Cities) that has been his typical venue and focus throughout his career, which began with "Falling Expectations" for Unearth in Winter 1977. He has published widely since, with at least 200 stories appearing in a wide range of journals. Beginning with ...
Speculative Fiction
Item of Terminology used by some writers and critics in place of "science fiction". Its first known use is by the reviewer M F Egan in "Book-Talk" (October 1899 Lippincott's Monthly Magazine), which describes Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward, 2000-1887 (1888) as "speculative fiction". In the symposium published as Of Worlds Beyond: The Science of Science Fiction Writing (anth 1947) edited by ...
Shuttered Room, The
Film (1967; vt Blood Island). Warner Brothers/Seven-Arts Productions, Ltd. (US),Warner-Pathe' (UK). Produced by Phillip Hazelton. Directed by David Greene. Written by D B Ledrov and Nathaniel Tanchuck based on the title story by August Derleth and H P Lovecraft in The Shuttered Room and Other Pieces (coll 1959). Costumes designed by Caroline Mott. Cast includes Carol Lynley, Oliver Reed, Flora ...
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 ...