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.
Site updated on 25 July 2024
Sponsor of the day: Handheld Press
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 ...
Ruellan, André
(1922-2016) French medical doctor and author, usually as by Kurt Steiner, though sometimes as by Kurt Wargar or André Louvigny, and intermittently under his own name. Most of his early work is horror, and has not been translated; among his works of sf interest is the Ortog sequence comprising Aux Armes d'Ortog ["Ortog's Call to Arms"] (1960) and Ortog et les Ténèbres ["Ortog and the Shadows"] (1969), both assembled as Ortog (omni ...
Gay, J Drew
(1846-1890) UK journalist, politician, explorer and author in whose The Mystery of the Shroud: A Tale of Socialism (1887) a fog gives a socialist secret society the chance to conquer England in the Near Future, but the chance is muffed. [JC]
American Boy, The
US monthly Magazine for older boys from November 1899 to July/August 1941, initially in large 12in x 16in format and shrinking to 11in x 14in Slick size in November 1924. The American Boy was published by The Sprague Publishing Company of Detroit, Michigan, whose William C Sprague saw a need for a magazine just for boys that did not talk down to them. Sprague was replaced as publisher and editor by his brother-in-law Griffith Ogden ...
Anson, August
Pseudonym of UK author Reginald William Malyon Gibbs (1878-1942), who under his own name published numerous mathematics references and textbooks. His sf novel as by Anson, When Woman Reigns (1938), transports its protagonist to first the twenty-sixth and then the thirty-sixth century. Author and hero take a rather dim view of these two periods, because in both men are subservient to women (see Feminism). [JC]
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 ...