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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 ...
Olsen, Geir Arne
(1957-1990) Norwegian underground author, artist and political philosopher, better known under his pen-names Leonard Borgzinner and Leon Latex; his varied works include short stories of a high literary quality, essays on Samuel R Delany and Harlan Ellison, articles on technology versus ecology, punk rock from The Velvet Underground to The Clash, et cetera. Acclaimed editor since his early teens, ...
Wilkie, J
(? -? ) UK author of The Vision of Nehemiah Sintram (1902), a Dystopia depicting an Underground world ruled by a Satan-like figure, who may in fact be Satan. Sintram himself, and his vision of a hellish landscape, seems to have been based on Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué's Sintram und seine Gefahrten: eine nordische Erzahlung nach Albrecht Durer (1815; various trans ...
Nanovic, John L
(1906-2001) Austro-Hungarian-born US editor and author, in the USA from early childhood; Sam Moskowitz, in "Me and My Shadow" (May 1990 Pulp Vault #7), records an interview with Nanovic in which he claims to have been born in Palmerton, Pennsylvania on 7 October 1907. From 1931 he was associated with Street & Smith, for whom he edited The Shadow from 1932 to 1943 (see The ...
Gong
Rock band, identified as French although they were founded by Australian Daevid Allen (1938-2015) and have included English and American as well as French members. Allen had been working in London in the late 1960s but, temporarily denied a visa, relocated to Paris and formed Gong with his partner, Gilli Smith (1933- ). The group's first album Magick Brother/Mystic Sister (1970) has a rather fairy, and indeed airy-fairy, vibe, inaugurating in rudimentary ...
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 ...