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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 ...
Atwood, Margaret
(1939- ) Canadian poet and author, some of whose poetry – like Speeches for Doctor Frankenstein (1966 chap) – hints at sf content, but whose interest in the form as a prose writer only became evident (as did her dis-ease at being identified as a writer of sf) with the publication of The Handmaid's Tale (1985), which won the Governor General's Award in Canada and the first ...
Carmichael, Claire
(1940- ) Australian author resident in the USA from the mid 1990s, best known, under her pseudonym Clair McNab, for the Carol Ashton policiers, the Denise Cleever intelligence thrillers, and for the Kylie Kendall private eye tales set in Los Angeles. Her Young Adult sf, under her own name, is less familiar. The Virtual Realities Trilogy – comprising Virtual Realities (1992), Cybersaur ...
Star Saga
Videogame series (from 1987). MasterPlay. Designed by Andrew Greenberg, Rick Dutton, Walter Freitag, Michael Massimilla. / Star Saga is a series of paragraph-system Board Games, in the manner of Tales of the Arabian Nights (see Board Games), which are distinguished by the use of computer software to perform the necessary housekeeping tasks (an approach resembling that employed ...
Pocock, Roger
(1865-1941) UK adventure, journalist and author, noted for having interviewed Butch Cassidy, and for founding the patriotic Legion of Frontiersmen in 1905. The Chariot of the Sun: A Fantasy (1910) depicts a 1980 UK governed along the lines of Medieval Futurism: the reigning monarchy enforces a medieval life style, while at the same time advances in Technology have allowed Britain to maintain a ...
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 ...