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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.
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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 ...
Sherburne, Zoa
(1912-1995) US author of much fiction for Young Adult readers, including about 300 stories; an sf novel, The Girl Who Knew Tomorrow (1970), about a young woman whose powers of Precognition alienate her from society. Why Have the Birds Stopped Singing? (1974) is fantasy. [JC]
Wolfe, Humbert
(1885-1940) Italian-born civil servant, poet and author, in the UK from infancy, active from around 1915; he served in the Ministry of Munitions during World War One and in the Ministry of Labour in World War Two. The title poem in Shylock Reasons with Mr Chesterton (coll 1920 chap) uses the term "reasons" with some despair; a telling quatrain on the anti-semitism of G K ...
Stone, Tamara Ireland
(? - ) US marketing executive and author whose Young Adult Time Between Us sequence beginning with Time Between Us (2012) casts two young people together, the one from 2012 using his Time Travel skills to meet the other in 1995; their budding romance is fraught with difficulties. [JC]
Sher, Antony
(1949- ) South African-born actor and author, mostly in UK from 1968; of his four novels, The Feast (1998) incorporates sf elements into a complexly Equipoisal narrative set in an unnamed Near Future African state after its brutal dictator has been deposed and (seemingly) killed. This profound disruption to the reality structure of the fragile state causes literal convulsions in the ...
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 ...