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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 ...
Sharmat, Mitchell
(1927-2011) US author of books for young readers, beginning with Reddy Rattler and Easy Eagle (1979 chap) and others with fantasy elements consistent with their genre [none are listed below]. He is of sf interest for A Girl of Many Parts (1988), a Young Adult tale in which an adolescent girl, making an interstellar Computer purchase, discovers that she has created a double; conniptions, some involving ...
Olympica
Board and counter Wargame (1978). Metagaming Concepts. Designed by Lynn Willis. / In Olympica a Hive Mind has spontaneously appeared in a communications Web used on twenty-third-century Mars, and is threatening to absorb a million human minds before expanding out into the solar system. Earth's United Nations orders a raid on a vital nexus of the Web Mind positioned in the caldera of the ...
Oxenham, John
Pseudonym of UK lay figure in the Congregationalist Church, poet, editor and author William Arthur Dunkerley (1852-1941); he was co-founder, with Robert Barr of The Idler. Many of his works – some of them now-unread fantasies – served to advance his religious convictions. Two novels are of sf interest: ...
Suttner, Baroness Bertha von
(1843-1914) Austrian journalist, editor and author, famed for her pacifism, for which she became famous after the publication of her novel, Die Waffen Nieder! ["Lay Down Your Arms"] (1889). She is of sf interest for Der Menschheit Hochgedanken: Roman aus der nächsten Zukunft (1911; trans Nathan Haskell Dole as When Thoughts Will Soar: A Romance of the Immediate Future 1914), a Near Future ...
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 ...