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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 ...
O'Brien, Tim
(1946- ) US author best known for anguished accounts of the Vietnam War, including the novel Going After Cacciato (1978); of sf interest is The Nuclear Age (1985), set in a Near Future America in 1995 anxiety-ridden by anticipations of nuclear war. The protagonist, an ex-paramilitary radical now middle-aged, goes to ground, where he digs a useless bomb shelter against the coming ...
Berthet, Élie
(1815-1891) French author, who specialized over his prolific career mostly in tales of criminal life set in Paris, publishing more than 100 novels over his long career; he is perhaps best known in English translation for L'homme des bois (1861; trans anon as The Wild Man of the Woods: A Story of the Island of Sumatra 1868), the family of whose human protagonist is threatened by the eponymous advanced orang-utan (see Apes as Human); ...
Cowie, Donald
(1911-2006) UK author (blind since 1984), in New Zealand from 1928, in UK from 1934, resident in Switzerland from 1964, who has also written as Aldwyn Abberley, Julian Mountain, R F St B Pytchely and Rufus Stone; he was the author of several crabbed Future History visions of a century in decay. Prose & Verse (coll 1945) as with Julian Mountain contains some fantasy stories; of sf interest are ...
Barrett, Neal, Jr
(1929-2014) US author who worked extensively under his own name, and also as Victor Appleton, Chad Calhoun, Franklin W Dixon (a Stratemeyer House Name), Rebecca Drury and J D Hardin. He began publishing sf with "To Tell the Truth" in Galaxy for August 1960 and contributed with some regularity to the SF Magazines, much of this ...
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 ...