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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 ...
Tea, Travis
1. An alternate Pseudonym of the unidentified sf author who wrote as Dustin Lasser. / 2. This joke "travesty" byline was independently used by a team of over thirty sf/fantasy authors and editors – including Michael Armstrong, Pierce Askegren, Andrew Burt, Adam-Troy ...
Avoledo, Tullio
(1957- ) Italian author (see Italy) whose first novel, L'elenco telefonico di Atlantide ["The Atlantis Telephone Directory"] (2003), is a Satire of the modern commercial world set partly in a conspiracy-choked Atlantis; the influence of Thomas Pynchon may be detected. La ragazza di Vajont (2008; trans Gillian Ania as ...
Vigers, Daphne
(? -? ) UK author, apparently active from the early 1940s until circa 1965, who is of modest sf interest for Atlantis Rising (1944), in which Atlantis is seen sinking in the deep past, and rising again in the future, though perhaps symbolically, through the agency of Britain, whose inhabitants (it is revealed) are direct descendants of escaped Atlanteans. [JC]
Leydenfrost, A
Working name of American artist Alexander Leydenfrost (1888-1961), also credited simply as Leydenfrost, who was born in Hungary as Baron Sandor Leidenfrost; upon moving to America at the age of 34, he Americanized his first name to Alexander and changed the spelling of his last name. Trained as an artist in his native land, Leydenfrost emigrated to America in 1923 along with three friends, Peter Lorre, Bela Lugosi, and Paul Lucas, who went on to successful acting careers; with such connections, ...
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 ...