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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 ...
Vira, Soma
(1932-2003) Indian-born poet and author, based in USA where she died. She is of sf interest for her Planet Keepers sequence beginning with Checkmating Aliens (1996); the publication sequence, with later volumes in terms of internal chronology published earlier, seems not to correlate with the order in which the series was written. In a highly baroque Space Opera idiom, the sequence describes complicated conflicts and joinings between humans ...
Parker, Richard
(1914-1990) UK author for children began publishing with the Escape from the Zoo sequence comprising Escape from the Zoo (1945 chap) (see Zoo), A Camel from the Desert (1947), in which territory the escaped animals find safety, and The Penguin Goes Home (1951), which carries the action further south. Of direct sf interest are The Hendon Fungus (1967), about fungal specimens from abroad proliferating in ...
Hull, Elizabeth Anne
Working name of Elizabeth Ann Hull (1937-2021), US academic and critic who taught English for more than 30 years at William Rainey Harper College in Palatine, Illinois, and remained a Professor Emerita of that institution; married to Frederik Pohl from 1984 until his death. She was long active in the Science Fiction Research Association, editing its SFRA Newsletter ...
Frankowski, Leo A
(1943-2008) US author known principally for his Alternate-History series, the Adventures of Conrad Stargard: The Cross-Time Engineer (1986), The High-Tech Knight (1989) and The Radiant Warrior (1989), all three assembled as Conrad Stargard: The Radiant Warrior (omni 2004); plus The Flying Warlord (1989), Lord Conrad's Lady (1990) and Conrad's Quest for Rubber ...
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 ...