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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 ...
Crowley, John
(1942- ) US teacher and author who has also worked in documentary films and television since 1966. His sf novels have had a considerable impact on the field, and his fantasies have established him as a figure whose work markedly stretches the boundaries of genre literature. / His first novel, The Deep (1975), is set on a flat discworld resting on a pillar that extends beyond measurement into the circumambient galactic Deep, in which very few stars are ...
Hovenden, Robert
UK author, most probably Robert Meyrick Hovenden (circa 1809-1885), who published various books 1844-1876. Of sf interest is an unfictionalized Future History, A Tract of Future Times [for subtitle see Checklist] (1851), told as though written after 1950 and giving an accounting of the previous era, concentrating on the last fifty years of the nineteenth century, espousing a kind of benevolently anarchic ...
Poyser, Victoria
Earlier name of the American artist now known as Victoria Lisi (1949- ), and the name used for her sf art. The former wife of sf fan Kennedy "Kippy" Poyser (1945-2009), she married artist Julius Lisi in 1987 and then went by Victoria Poyser-Lisi or Victoria (Poyser) Lisi before adopting her current name. She received a BFA from Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, and although she has attributed her interest in sf art to her attendance at the World Fantasy ...
McDowall, Alistair
(1987- ) UK playwright whose plays tend to incorporate elements of Fantastika into plots often set in North-East England, with an effect of gonzo spoofery. Brilliant Adventures (performed May 2013 Royal Exchange, Manchester; 2013 chap) uses the device of a Time Machine to generate farcical encounters now and in the Near Future; Captain Amazing (August 2013 ...
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 ...