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 ...
Casparian, Gregory
(1856-1942) Turkish-Armenia-born painter, photo-engraver and author, whose distant Near Future sf novel, An Anglo-American Alliance: A Serio-Comic Romance and Forecast of the Future (1906), frames its central story with a description of a twentieth-century world dominated by America and the UK; Technology has advanced in various ways; Sex can be determined prenatally; ...
Irwin, Robert
(1946-2024) UK academic, mediaevalist, professional juggler (briefly) and author whose work in Arabian studies, of importance in itself, underpins the world envisioned in his first and most famous novel, The Arabian Nightmare (1983; rev 1987), which may be the definitive rendering of its central conceit: a mise en abyme-like dream narrative whose protagonist, upon seeming to awaken, only finds himself passing out of one story through a Portal into a deeper dream [for ...
Real Time Tactics
Term used to describe a form of Computer Wargame in which players fight small scale military battles, typically adopting the role of a squad commander. Events occur continuously (in "real time") and moves must be made without prolonged reflection. Sf members of the form include Syndicate (1993) and Mech Commander (1998) (see Battletech). [NT]
Evans, Anna D
(? -? ) UK (?) author whose Feminist assault upon celibacy and male domination, It Beats the Shakers; Or, a New Tune (1905), skirts sf in its somewhat abstract rendering of the arrival (at some moment in the deep past) of woman from Venus, on condition that men treat them properly; of their later departure from Earth when the drab truths dominating male behaviour become incontrovertible; and the final ...
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 ...