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
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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 ...
Castle, Jack
Pseudonym of US professional stuntman, police officer and author Chris Tortora (? - ), in the first capacity employed for about a decade with Universal Studios. His first novel, Europa Journal (2015) – which at some early points is structurally evocative of Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) directed by Steven Spielberg and other ...
Fantastic Worlds [comic]
US Comic (1952-1953). Standard Comics. Three issues, numbered #5 – #7, on alternate months to the imprint's other sf comic Lost Worlds, which ran for two issues numbered #5 – #6 (many of the comic series owned by the publisher – Ned L Pines – started with #5). Artists include Jon L Blummer, John Celardo, Art Saaf and Alex Toth. Each issue ...
Rushton, William
(1937-1996) UK actor, cartoonist, editor, journalist and author who often wrote or drew as Willie Rushton. The influence of J B Morton is particularly clear in serial cartoon Satires like Brimstone Belcher (June 1960-March 1961 Liberal News), an influence which permeated the journal Private Eye, which Rushton co-founded in 1961. As actor and comic, he was a founding participant in the UK satirical ...
Shute, Nevil
Working name of UK aeronautical engineer and author Nevil Shute Norway (1899-1960), who served as a stretcher bearer in Dublin during the Easter rising in 1916, and was in active service at the end of World War One; for many years he combined writing with engineering work, specializing in Zeppelins – the failure of the R101 disillusioned and embittered him; after his demobilization from active service in World War Two, ...
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 ...