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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 ...
Duvernois, Henri
Pseudonym of French screenwriter, playwright and author Henri-Simon Schwabacher (1875-1937), prolific in various genres. Of sf interest is L'Homme s'est retrouvé (1936; trans Brian Stableford as The Man Who Found Himself 2010), a very early example of interstellar travel, by realistically described Starship, in the French tradition of the ...
Sci Fiction
US Online Magazine or, perhaps more accurately, the fiction section of the Sci Fi Channel (see Television) website SciFi.com and not a separate magazine in its own right. Sci Fiction was edited by Ellen Datlow and featured a new story each week, plus sometimes an additional reprint story. It ran from 19 May 2000 to 28 December 2005. / Datlow's track record as fiction editor at ...
Baker, Henry
(1698-1774) Naturalist and early microscopist, one of the founders of the Society of Arts in 1754; the father-in-law of Daniel Defoe. He was the author of an epic poem, The Universe (1727), the subtitle of which proclaims its intended aim "to restrain the pride of Man". This is something Baker attempts by striving repeatedly for what we might call a Sense of Wonder ("Amazing Thought! What Mortal can conceive!") ...
Senkovsky, Osip
Form of his name used by Polish-born musical scholar, inventor, linguist, editor and author Józef-Julian Sękowski (1800-1858), in Russia from 1821, where he wrote copiously as Senkovsky, though his Satires were as by Baron Brambeus. He wrote in Russian, and is treated as a significant Russian literary figure. Fantasticheskie puteshestviya Barona Brambeusa (coll of linked stories 1833; trans Louis Pedrotti as ...
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 ...