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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 ...
Kearney, Susan
(1955- ) US author, usually of paranormal romances like the Pendragon Legacy [for titles see Checklist], though some of her work – especially the loose unnamed series comprising The Challenge (2005), The Dare (2005) and The Ultimatum (2006) – is amply tinged with sf. In the first of these, a secret agent finds love in the future through Time Travel; in the second, an ...
Jonbar Point
Term occasionally used in sf criticism for a crucial forking-place in Time, whose manipulation via Time Travel can radically affect the future that follows. "Jonbar hinge" has also been used synonymously. The name derives from Jack Williamson's The Legion of Time (May-July 1938 Astounding; rev 1952), which deals with Changewar ...
Lourie, Richard
(1940- ) US translator and author whose Near Future sf novel, Zero Gravity (1987), spoofs the Cold War (already beginning to fade in 1987) as two poets are sent to the Moon on conflicting cultural missions, but they kick their heels up and defect. [JC]
Ole Luk-Oie
The best-known pseudonym of India-born UK military thinker and author Ernest Dunlop Swinton (1868-1951), who served in various capacities in the UK army from 1888 until he retired in 1919 with the rank of Major-General. His first book, The Defence of Duffer's Drift: A Few Experiences in Field Defence for Detached Posts Which May Prove Useful in Our Next War (1904 chap) as by Backsight Forethought, is couched as a sequence of fantasticated dreams in which Lieutenant Forethought ...
Nicholls, Peter
(1939-2018) Australian editor and author, primarily a critic and historian of sf through his creation and editing of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction [see below]; resident in the UK 1970-1988, in Australia from 1988; worked as an academic in English literature (1962-1968, 1971-1977), scripted television documentaries, was a Harkness Fellow in Film-making (1968-1970) in the USA, worked as a publisher's editor (1982-1983), often broadcast film and book reviews on BBC Radio from 1974 and ...