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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 ...
Bradford, J S
(? -? ) UK author of Even a Worm (1936), a novel similar in content to Arthur Machen's The Terror: A Fantasy (1917; rev 1927): the animal kingdom revolts against humanity's rule. What merit it has is diminished by the concluding Clichéd rationalization of the story as being just a game-hunter's nightmare. [JE]
Hampson, Frank
(1918-1985) UK artist who almost singlehandedly brought the UK Comic strip into the scientific age. When the Reverend Marcus Morris and Frank Hampson originated the Eagle comic in 1949-1950, Hampson created the sf strip Dan Dare – Pilot of the Future for its full-colour front pages. While ostensibly designed to foster Christian values, what made the strip so revolutionary was Hampson's genius for colour, ...
Aldunate, Elena
(1925-2005) Working name of Chilean author María Elena Aldunate Bezanilla, one of the first women in that country to produce a sizeable body of sf, though she wrote Utopian fantasies and realist works as well. She was vice president and co-founder, along with Hugo Correa, Roberto Pliscoff and Andrés Rojas Murphy, of the Club Chileno de Ciencia Ficción [Chilean SF Club] in the early 1970s. / Aldunate's ...
Yelverton, Christopher
Pseudonym of unidentified UK author (? -? ), who may or may not be related to the historical English political figures, Sir Christopher Yelverton (1536-1612) and his grandson, Sir Christopher Yelverton, 1st Baronet (? -1654). The dreaming protagonist of Oneiros; Or, Some Questions of the Day (1889) finds himself translated a millennium hence to another planet (see Life on Other Worlds), ...
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 ...