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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 ...
Fisher, Lou
Working name of US technical author and author Louis Fisher (1940- ) who, during a twenty-year career writing IBM computer manuals, began publishing sf with "Triggerman" in Galaxy for September 1973. His first novel, Sunstop 8 (1978), is a Space Opera; his second, The Blue Ice Pilot (1986) as Lou Fisher, features a space war made possible by developments in ...
McConkey, James
(1921-2019) US academic and author of a desultory Postmodern Dystopia, Kayo: The Authentic and Annotated Autobiographical Novel from Outer Space (1987), a story within a story within a story told ultimately by a narrator whose name – Ohcnas, Sancho [Panza] spelled backwards – and whose crime – he kills the Nod – confesses McConkey's Satirical, deflating ...
Skylark Award
The familiar name for the E E Smith or Edward E Smith Memorial Award, an Award presented in memory of E E Smith by the New England Science Fiction Association (NESFA) at Boskone, its annual Convention. Winners, who are chosen by vote of NESFA members, are honoured for having "contributed significantly to science fiction, both through work in the field and by exemplifying the personal qualities which made ...
Fortean Bureau
US semi-professional Online Magazine of strange, weird and unusual speculative fiction, dedicated to the type of story that would have interested Charles Fort, renowned collector of unexplained phenomena. It was published and edited by Jeremy and Sarah Tolbert from Laramie, Wyoming. It began in August 2002 and maintained a monthly schedule until December 2004, when it became quarterly, and ceased in April 2006 after 34 ...
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 ...