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.
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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 ...
Engel, Leonard
(1916-1964) US journalist and author, with Emanuel S Piller, of one of the very first Cold War Future War novels, World Aflame: The Russian-American War of 1950 (1947), in which the USA's control of the air – and use of that preponderance in a nuclear first strike – proves insufficient to crush Russia, nor does a subsequent use of Poison gas ...
Monster Magnet
American rock band formed in New Jersey in 1989. There have been several line-up changes: the original members were Dave Wyndorf, Tim Cronin and John McBain; by 1993 only Wyndorf, the main creative force and songwriter, remained. The group's sound is stoner rock, being musically influenced by such early 1970s bands as Black Sabbath and Hawkwind. / Marvel Comics are a clear inspiration (one track is named "Ego the Living ...
Skillman, Phil
(1845-1922) US attorney and author, who also wrote as by Kettle Kettleson. His only novel, A Living Dead Man; Or, the Strange Case of Moses Scott (October-? 1897 The Albany Law Journal as "A Living Dead Man; Or, the Strange Case of Moses Scott: An Accurate and Faithful Narration of the Complications Caused by a Litigant's Return from the Lethean Shore"; 1897 chap), applies supernatural and sf motifs, seemingly without noticing the distinction, to what might seem primarily ...
Viehl, S L
Pseudonym of US medical technician (specializing in trauma) and author Sheila Lynn Kelly (1961- ), who uses S L Viehl for her sf; she has also published as by Gena Hale, Jessica Hall, Rebecca Kelly and Lynn Viehl. Her sf titles are exclusively set in the StarDoc Universe, whose first subseries, the StarDoc sequence beginning with Stardoc (2000) and ending with Dream Called Time (2010), follows the ...
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 ...