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: Handheld Press
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 ...
Twain, Mark
Pseudonym of US author Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835-1910), whose early life and work revolved around the Mississippi River, initially as a steamboat pilot 1857-1861, a job he loved and whose loss because of the outbreak of the Civil War was deeply wounding to him, though he had in fact begun publishing very early, his first piece being "A Gallant Fireman" (16 January 1851 Western Union). His 1860s sojourn in California may have been fruitful – his ...
Day the Earth Stood Still, The
1. Film (1951). Twentieth Century Fox. Directed by Robert Wise. Written by Edmund H North, based on "Farewell to the Master" (October 1940 Astounding) by Harry Bates. Cast includes Sam Jaffe, Hugh Marlowe, Patricia Neal and Michael Rennie. 92 minutes. Black and white. / Produced at the beginning of the sf boom of the 1950s, this is generally regarded as a classic, though its ethics might ...
Mishima Yukio
Pen name of Kimitake Hiraoka (1925-1970), a controversial Japanese author, playwright and sometime actor. Mishima's domestic output alternated between highbrow literary works and bill-paying potboilers, but only the former have been translated into English; the bulk of his work is non-sf, but as the sales of his literary works declined in the early 1960s, Mishima placed greater emphasis on genre forms (see Equipoise). A recurring though inexplicit subtext in his ...
Sterling, Brett
A House Name of Better Publications, used originally in the magazines Startling Stories and Captain Future for five short Captain Future novels, three of which – "The Star of Dread" (Captain Future 1943), "Magic Moon" (Captain Future 1944) and "Red Sun of Danger" ( ...
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 ...