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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 ...
Reiffel, Leonard
(1927-2017) US physicist, broadcaster, noted for his competent and accessible radio programme The World Tomorrow which began in 1964, Deputy Director of the Apollo Moon project for NASA 1965-1969, and author; in his Near Future Technothriller, The Contaminant (1978), a plot is brewed to destroy the USSR with a virus that causes cancer (see Pandemic). [JC]
Ruins and Futurity
Ruins are not a necessary prelude to Futurity. A ruined structure may be nothing more than a structure that has fallen into illegible ruin (see Entropy), leaving no message for us to draw upon: no warning to the world we live in, no sense that it fronts in stone a meaningful Time Abyss, or some anticipation of things to come. But from time immemorial a Ruin, or in more recent times an Edifice constructed in the shape of a Ruin [for ...
Schomburg, Alex
(1905-1998) US illustrator and Comic-book artist; he occasionally spelled his name Schomberg, and in his early career sometimes signed his work as Xela. His first assignment was for Hugo Gernsback in 1925; he did his first cover in that year for Science and Invention. During his 65-year career, which extended into the 1980s with covers for ...
Karlson, Hans
An Australian pseudonym – or more likely House Name – used on one novella-length Scientific Thrillers tale of sf interest, Atomic Death (1948 chap), in which an Invention capable of enlarging or Miniaturizing all matter is stolen by criminals. [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 ...