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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 ...
Verrill, A Hyatt
(1871-1954) US naturalist, explorer and author, most of whose circa 105 books were nonfiction; he contributed a science column to American Boy. He also wrote juveniles, of which the Boy Adventurers sequence is of some sf interest, most of them being Lost Race tales; relevant titles, all set in differing lost regions of British Guiana, include The Boy Adventurers in the Forbidden Land (1922), ...
Boitard, Pierre
(1787-1859) French botanist, geologist and author, whose two works of sf interest are composed for young readers; each title appeared separately in 1830s journals, and was subsequently assembled in revised form in Paris avant les hommes (coll 1861; trans Brian Stableford as Journey to the Sun 2016). The framing narrative, in which a demon conducts a human interlocutor on a guided tour of regions of interest, is shared. "Etudes ...
Bailey, Mark
(? - ) US author whose Saint: A Novel of Intrigue and Faith (1997) applies speculative Genetic Engineering concepts – the transfer of human personalities via DNA samples – to a tale involving high Religion (the Pope has St Peter resurrected) and intrigue, as St Peter is being stalked by an assassin. Bailey's handling of these issues is light-hearted. [JC]
Cardona Peña, Alfredo
(1917-1995) Costa Rican poet, essayist, journalist, academic and author who lived in Mexico from 1938, but who preserved ties with his native country throughout his life. Together with the Chilean Hugo Correa, he could be considered the Latin American version of Ray Bradbury. He began to study arts in San José, Costa Rica, and finished in El Salvador, where he also started working as a ...
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 ...