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.
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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 ...
Philip, Alex
Working name of Alexander Philip (1882-1968) Scotland-born entrepreneur and author, in US with family from 1884 and in Canada from circa 1900. He is of sf interest for his Lost Race novel, The Painted Cliff (1927), set deep in a valley in the mountains of British Columbia where an ancient white civilization (Philip is condescending to Native Americans) is discovered. [JC]
de la Warr, George
(1904-1969) UK pioneer of a controversial alternative healing therapy involving "radionics" devices. He is best known in sf circles for his Pseudoscientific "Hieronymus machine" which enthralled John W Campbell Jr in the 1950s. This supposed Psionics machine had an elusive tactile output (the varying stickiness of a rubber pad) which was generally regarded as too subjective to be meaningful. ...
FAPA
The commonly used acronym for the Fantasy Amateur Press Association, formed in 1937 in the USA by John B Michel and Donald A Wollheim to facilitate distribution on an APA basis of Fanzines published by and for members; it was the first of many such groups in sf Fandom (created in the pattern of older non-fan "amateur journalism" or "ajay" APAs ...
Danville, Gaston
Pseudonym of French author Armand Blocq (1870-1933), who initially came to prominence through his involvement with the journal Mercure de France, which he helped found in 1890, and which espoused the Symbolist movement in French poetry. The Anatomy of Love and Murder: Psychoanalytical Fantasies (coll trans Brian Stableford from various sources 2013) presents tales dating from 1891 to 1916, several of them assembled in ...
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 ...