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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 ...
Hunt, H L
(1889-1974) Polyprogenitive US oil tycoon, and author of the Alpaca sequence comprising Alpaca (1960) and Alpaca Revisited (1967), which begins as a romantic excursion into the eponymous Utopian kingdom, then becomes a more formal set of arguments designed to keep lands such as Alpaca free from dictators. Chief among these is the suggestion that voting rights be weighted in favour of the age and wealth of the voter. Taxes will be ...
Brautigam, Don
(1946-2008) US artist, active in the sf, Fantasy and Horror genres from 1974 until early in the new century, who worked mostly with acrylics and airbrush; he was sometimes credited in error as Don Brautigan and once as Don Brautigom. His first recorded sf cover was for the 1974 paperback reissue of The Galactic Rejects (1973) by Andrew J Offutt, which like other early work ...
Appleyard, Bryan
(1951- ) UK author whose sf novel, The First Church of the New Millennium (1994), conflates (not entirely with conviction) two forms of human aspiration: the building of a great new cathedral, and a manned mission to Mars. [JC]
Stradling, Matthew
Pseudonym of Irish author Martin Francis Mahony (1831-1882), whose "Cheap John's" Auction: A Narrative in Three Parts (1871 chap) recasts the Battle of Dorking scenario, in allegorical form; the resulting tale treats defeated Britain without much sympathy. [JC]
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 ...