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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 ...
Quoin
Pseudonym of unidentified US author (? -? ) in whose Near Future tale, E Pluribus Unum: A Story of Today and of Today's Tomorrow (1936), America is split by a civil war between Fascists and Communists, but recovers: the book ends with the first female President in office. [JC]
Valentine, James
(1961- ) Australian author whose Young Adult JumpMan sequence, beginning with JumpMan: Rule 1: Don't Touch Anything (2002), is predicated to comic effect on the fantasy rule that the Hero of a tale must do that which is forbidden. In very loose sf terms, the Time Travel stories of the series follow the consequences of this rule. [JC]
Calderón, Gabe
(? - ) Canadian author who identifies as trans, non-binary and Native American. Their first novel, Màgòdiz (2022), is set in a distant Near Future Ruined Earth world; the protagonist of the tale must flee a monstrous entity that or who controls the remnants of Homo sapiens, and with their mate creates stories to sustain their ...
Smith, George O
(1911-1981) US electronics engineer and author, most active and prominent in the 1940s in Astounding Science-Fiction, in which his first story, "QRM – Interplanetary", appeared in October 1942: the tale both began his sf career and initiated his most famous endeavour, the Venus Equilateral Series of stories (all in Astounding except for one late addition) about 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 ...