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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 ...
Halacy, D S, Jr
(1919-2002) US author, mostly of nonfiction studies in science and Futures Studies [see Checklist for selected titles]; of direct sf interest are Rocket Rescue (1968), an adventure in Near Future Space Flight, and Return from Luna (1969), which adds a Future War to the mix. [JC]
Cecil, Henry
Pseudonym of Henry Cecil Leon (1902-1976), UK barrister and later County Court judge who wrote numerous witty, legally knowledgable stories, generally revolving around courtrooms, ingenious crimes, eccentric lawyers and unreliable witnesses. The most famous is Brothers in Law (1955), which was filmed in 1957. His first work of genre interest seems to be the brief and flippant ghost story, "Proof" (April 1964 Argosy UK), collected in ...
Metzl, Jamie
(1968- ) US entrepreneur and author whose Rich Azadian series beginning with Genesis Code (2014) features a Near Future rightwing conspiracy to manipulate the American Political scene of 2023 and ensure the election of a demagogue to the presidency. Star reporter Rich Azadian, and his cadre of tech-smart collaborators, are drawn into this conspiracy through the unsolved mass murders of ...
Cărtărescu, Mircea
(1956- ) Romanian teacher, poet and author, active from around 1978. He is of some sf interest for his first novel, Visul ["The Dream"] (1989; uncensored version, vt Nostalgia 1993; trans Julian Semilian 2005), where an exorbitant use of the topoi of Fantastika are assembled (and re-assembled through the five disparate sections of the work) into a kaleidoscopic rendering of the ...
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 ...