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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.
Site updated on 25 July 2024
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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 ...
Bogdanov, Alexander
Pseudonym of Russian philosopher, physician, revolutionary figure, and author Alexander Alexandrovich Malinovsky (1873-1928), a leading member of the Bolshevik party 1903-1909, more radical than his ultimately successful rival, Vladimir Lenin, and the author of a vast treatise, Empiriomonizm: Stat'i po Filosofii ["Empiriomonism: Articles on Philosophy"] (1904-1906 3vols), in which he attempted to ground Marxism in contemporary philosophy. After his expulsion from the party ...
Fitzgibbon, Constantine
(1919-1983) US-born author, in the UK after the mid-1930s, in Ireland after about 1965, much of whose fiction reflected a complexly conservative cast of mind. His first sf novel, The Iron Hoop (1949), describes an occupied city after World War Three; resistance is doomed. When the Kissing Had to Stop (1960) depicts in Anglophobe terms the self-destruction of a UK dominated by a Communist-inspired government. Less known but more ...
Goldberg, Marshall
(1930-2005) US physician, teacher and author (sometimes as Marshall Goldberg, M D) of medical thrillers, some of which move into the Near Future, including Disposable People (1980) with Kenneth Kay, about a disease which suddenly ravages America, and Nerve (1981). He should not be confused with his father, the football player Marshall Goldberg (1917-2006). [JC]
Voivod
Canadian metal band formed in 1982, and still active through numerous line-up changes; the band name has also been spelt Voïvod. Most of their albums have sf-themed songs, beginning with Killing Technology (1987). The title track is a warning over space Weaponry, while "Forgotten in Space" is a bleak tale of a Prison Spaceship. Dimension Hatröss ...
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 ...