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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 ...
Chronister, Kay
(? - ) US author, best known for horror fiction in short story form, beginning with "The Warriors, the Mothers, the Drowned" in Beneath Ceaseless Seas for 28 May 2015, much of this work being assembled as Thin Places (coll 2020). Her first novel, the Young Adult Desert Creatures (2022), conveys its young protagonist and her father on a Fantastic Voyage ...
Shapeshifters
The ability to change shape is an ancient trope of Fantasy, extensively discussed in The Encyclopedia of Fantasy. It is a traditional power of various Supernatural Creatures such as Werewolves (invariably) and traditional Vampires; this entry focuses on sf rationalizations of the theme. A defining quality of ...
Carr, John F
(1944- ) US author who began publishing sf with The Ophidian Conspiracy (1976), an unpretentious Space Opera which demonstrated considerable imagination but a stylistic gaucheness; both characteristics mark his subsequent novels, Pain Gain (1977) and Carnifax Mardi Gras (extract February 1982 Fantasy Book as "Dance of the Dwarfs"; 1982), though the latter shows a ...
Kyme, Nick
(? - ) UK editor and author, involved in Games journalism and other functions from 1998; his sf novels are Ties to Games Workshop Wargame universes, beginning with Necromunda: Back from the Dead (2006) and continuing with a Warhammer novel, Warhammer: Oathbreaker (2008), and several for the more heavily sf-oriented ...
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 ...