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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 ...
Kilroy-Silk, Robert
(1942- ) UK broadcaster, politician (Labour MP 1974-1986) and occasional author, prominent in the first two roles for a volatility, ambition, party-changing episodes, and a growing Euroscepticism; he has often been lampooned in the media. His sf novel, The Ceremony of Innocence: A Novel of 1984 (1983), set in the very Near Future, reflects these tendencies and convictions. [JC]
Wayne, Jeff
(1943- ) US composer and musician, best known for his lengthy concept-album adaptation of H G Wells's The War of the Worlds (April-December 1897 Pearson's; 1898), released as Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of The War of the Worlds (1978). This work, narrated rather grumpily by Richard Burton, retells the whole of Wells's story through songs sung by David Essex, Justin Hayward (of ...
Nova Express
US Amateur Magazine published by White Car Publications, Houston, Texas, edited by Michael Sumbera to #12 (Fall/Winter 1992) and thereafter by Lawrence Person. 22 issues from Spring 1987 to Summer 2002, originally three per year but irregular from 1990 on. It began inauspiciously, calling itself the "'Zine of the Avant Garde", stating it wished to "give people exposure" and determined to use the new technology to make the magazine something other than ...
Johns, Stratford
(1925-2002) South African actor, in the UK from 1948; best known for his long stint as Barlow in the BBC television police procedural series Z Cars, and its sequels and spin-offs, between 1962 and 1976. His sf novel for Young Adult readers, Gumphlumph (1966), about an Alien visitor to Earth, is of modest interest. [JC]
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 ...