SF Encyclopedia Home Page
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
Sponsor of the day: The League of Fan Funds
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 ...
Wright, Helen S
(1958- ) UK author whose A Matter of Oaths (1988) engagingly presents a familiar sf character – the Amnesiac protagonist who experiences flashback hints of a destiny larger than any of those around him dare contemplate – within a cogently described post-Cyberpunk frame dominated by The Guild of Webbers, Starship pilots who link two corrupt ...
Diffin, Charles W
(1884-1966) US engineer, airplane salesman and author who graduated with a degree in analytical chemistry from the University of Buffalo, New York. He was most active with the magazines published by William Clayton and Street & Smith. He was one of the better writers whom Harry Bates encouraged to write for the new Astounding Stories (see Astounding), though he rapidly descended into ...
Jonquil
Pseudonym of US author J L Collins (? -? ), of whom nothing is known except his authoring of two novels as by Jonquil, the non-fantastic Was She Engaged? (1871); and Queen Krinaleen's Plagues; Or, How a Simple People Were Destroyed. A Discourse in the Twenty-Second Century (1874), a very early example of the sf novel in which the past (that is, the period during which the novel was actually published) is misunderstood by a ...
Brynner, Rock
Working name of US musician, actor, academic and author Yul Brynner Junior (1946-2023), "Rock" being a childhood nickname in honour of the boxer Rocky Graziano; his relationship with his father Yul Brynner (1920-1985) was complex but fruitful, resulting in two studies of that actor. The son is of sf interest for The Doomsday Report (1998), a very Near-Future Satire on 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 ...