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 ...
Rolt-Wheeler, Francis W
Working name of UK author Francis William Wheeler (1876-1960), in US and Canada circa 1900-1925, later in Tunis and Nice; in his early career he specialized in stories for boys, though in his later years – after a spectacular 1915 divorce which led to his imprisonment – he turned to the kind of religious investigation, including forays into Theosophy, that characterized the career of his sister, Ethel Rolt Wheeler (1869-1958) (both siblings added ...
Leydenfrost, A
Working name of American artist Alexander Leydenfrost (1888-1961), also credited simply as Leydenfrost, who was born in Hungary as Baron Sandor Leidenfrost; upon moving to America at the age of 34, he Americanized his first name to Alexander and changed the spelling of his last name. Trained as an artist in his native land, Leydenfrost emigrated to America in 1923 along with three friends, Peter Lorre, Bela Lugosi, and Paul Lucas, who went on to successful acting careers; with such connections, ...
Martinson, Harry
(1904-1978) Swedish author and poet, active from the late 1920s, member of the Swedish Academy; recipient of the 1974 Nobel Prize for Literature. A prolific writer, Martinson's one contribution to sf is Aniara: en Revy om Människan i Tid och Rum (1953 Cikada; exp 1956; trans Hugh MacDiarmid and Elspeth Harley Schubert as Aniara: A Review of Man in Time and Space ...
Legion of Super-Heroes
Comic-book series about a group of diversely Superpowered youths in the thirtieth and thirty-first centuries, published by DC Comics. The Legion of Super-Heroes first appeared in Adventure Comics #247 (April 1958) in a Superboy story written by Otto Binder (see Eando Binder) and then featured in various Superman titles ...
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 ...