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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.
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 ...
Gratacap, Louis Pope
(1851-1917) US naturalist, museum curator and author whose first writings were nonfiction essays like "The Ice Age" for the Popular Science Monthly in 1878. His first sf novel, The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars: Being the Posthumous Papers of Bradford Torrey Dodd (1903), remains his best known. Dying in the conviction that dead humans transcendentally ascend to a Martian Reincarnation as embodied spirits, the narrator's father is soon ...
Finn, Ralph L
(1912-1999) UK author and journalist who published widely, collecting some of his short fiction as Collected Stories of Ralph L Finn (coll 1946 chap); in his notes on "This Sorry Scheme" (magazine publication undated), George Locke suggests that the tale prefigures Jack Finney's far more complex Time and Again (1970). Of some sf interest are three novels based on the time theories of J W ...
Bellamy, Edward
(1850-1898) US author and journalist, the latter from 1871, when he abandoned the practice of law before having properly begun it; no lawyers exist in the 2000 CE of his most famous work, the Utopia Looking Backward 2000-1887 (1888) and its sequel, Equality (1897), whose influence in the nineteenth century was enormous. His early works of fiction were Gothic; sentimental and labouredly influenced by Nathaniel ...
Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego?
Videogame (1985). Broderbund. Designed by Dane Bigham, Lauren Elliott, Gene Portwood and David Siefkin. Platforms: Amstrad, AppleII, C64, DOS, MasterSystem, TRS80, others. / Carmen Sandiego is the antagonist – later protagonist – of this long-running educational Videogame franchise initially inspired by the early Adventure game Colossal Cave and beginning with ...
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 ...