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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 ...
Nestle, Tom
(? - ) US author, of whom nothing is known under this name beyond a soft-porn Space Opera, Orgies in Space (1978; vt Star Whores 1978 as by A J Rimmer; vt Space Whores 1979 as by Rimmer). [JC]
Moran, Richard
(1942-2009) US author whose Near Future Disaster thrillers – beginning with Cold Sea Rising (1986), in which volcanic action melts the Ross Ice Shelf in the Antarctic – usually import Technothriller elements into their storylines, giving room for heroic action which turns the tables. Novels of this sort include Dallas Down (1988) and the Meade sequence ...
Newman, Robert
(1909-1998) US Radio scriptwriter and author, who began publishing work of genre interest with "I Belong to the Beast" in Horror Stories for June 1935, and who was active from around 1940 in radio; some early work appeared as by Roger Howard Norton, Robert Howard Norton and Rogers Howard Norton. His early novels – including Identity Unknown (1945) and The Enchanter (1962), the latter a thriller – were nonfantastic, and ...
Oboler, Arch
(1909-1987) US scriptwriter, playwright and author, involved in Radio from the early 1930s; he was extremely prolific in that decade, writing and usually producing an estimated 400 radio plays by 1940. His first script, "Futuristics", was broadcast by NBC in celebration of its parent firm's move to the Rockefeller Center in Manhattan; laced with touches of Satire, the script is a paean to the future as seen through the prism of ...
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 ...