SF Encyclopedia Home Page
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
Sponsor of the day: Handheld Press
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 ...
Eshkar, Shelley
(1970- ) American artist. His background and interests are unlike those of traditional sf artists, for after receiving a BFA from the Cooper Union School of Art in 1993, he has focused most of his attention on digital art, experimental animation, and multimedia presentations, often collaborating with artist Paul Kaiser. He has become a fixture of the New York art scene, regularly exhibiting his innovative artwork and films at museums and staging unusual dance recitals in ...
Lundberg, Knud
(1920-2002) Danish athlete and author whose Near Future tale, Det olympiske håb (1955; trans Eiler Hansen and William Luscombe as The Olympic Hope: A Story from the Olympic Games, 1996 1958), suggests that the Olympics (see Games and Sports) may eventually be plagued by the use of Drugs to improve the performance of athletes. [JC]
Houellebecq, Michel
(1958- ) French author, born Michel Thomas, though he took his grandmother's surname for his writing, and is known only under that name. His first work of genre interest is the intensely argued H.P. Lovecraft: Contre le monde, contre la vie (1991; trans Dorna Khazeni as H.P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life 2005), which includes two H P Lovecraft stories to demonstrate that both authors share a ...
Haig, Matt
(1975- ) UK author perhaps best known for his work for children and the Young Adult market, though his first novel, The Last Family in England (2004; vt The Labrador Pact 2009), is a Beast Fable retelling William Shakespeare's Henry IV, Part One (performed 1597; 1598) with an animal cast. The Dead Fathers Club (2006) is a ghost story which ...
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 ...