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: The League of Fan Funds
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 ...
Arnett, Jack
House Name, initially a pseudonym of Mike McQuay, used for the Bantam Book of Justice action-adventure series with intermittent sf content, opening with The Book of Justice #1: Genocide Express (1989). Apparently McQuay wrote one volume (not necessarily the first to appear) and farmed out the rest to others; John J Miller has claimed responsibility for ...
Longest Journey, The
Videogame (1999). Funcom. Designed by Ragnar Tørnquist. Platforms: Win. / The Longest Journey is a third-person graphical Adventure using a point and click interface. Set in the twin worlds of high technology Stark and magical Arcadia, it is an important example of a Science and Sorcery game, in which science fiction and fantasy tropes are combined and contrasted. The ...
Dixie, Florence
(1855-1905) UK traveller, journalist (the first female war correspondent in the English language) and author whose nonfiction Across Patagonia: A Lady Combs the Pampas (1880) – the only woman in her party, she was its dominant figure – captures something of her Feminist urgency. In Gloriana, or The Revolution of 1900 (1890) a woman disguised as a man is elected Prime Minister of the UK and, though unmasked, establishes full ...
Randall, Florence Engel
(1917-1997) US author who began to publish work of genre interest with "One Long Ribbon" in Fantastic for July 1962; her five novels, beginning with the nonfantastic Hedgerow (1967), were composed for the Young Adult market. They include fantasies like A Place of Sapphires (1969), The Almost Year (1971), and Haldane Station (1973), in all of which Gothic manifestations of the ...
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 ...