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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 ...
Davies, Russell T
(1963- ) UK television producer, scriptwriter, and author, born Stephen Russell Davies, who added the middle initial to his name to distinguish himself from the UK writer and television figure Russell Davies (also born in Wales). He began his career with the BBC in the 1980s, writing two sf serials for the Young Adult market, Dark Season (1991 6parts), featuring a young Kate Winslet (1975- ) in the story ...
Boardman, Tom
Working name of UK publisher and editor Thomas Volney Boardman Jr (1930-2017), who went to work for the family publishing company, T V Boardman, in 1949, and stayed on as managing director when the company changed ownership in 1954. This company published primarily mysteries, but also some sf and Comics including Swift Morgan (1948-1953). T V Boardman sf titles of some note include Peter George's ...
Music
This article deals with music as it is portrayed and speculated about in sf. For discussion of actual music with sf themes, see SF Music. / Of the Arts, music is the one most commonly featured in sf – albeit not quite to the extent that Fantasy is pervaded by it. Several sf writers studied it, notably including Lloyd Biggle Jr (PhD in musicology), Langdon ...
Kirkby, John
(circa 1705-1754) UK clergyman and author whose two main works were plagiarized and who may also have written as Pythagorolunister (see Checklist below for title). He substantially lifted his A New English Grammar (1746) from New Grammar (1745) by Anne Fisher (1719-1778), and is not therefore responsible for the eighteenth-century invention of the convention that "he" can stand for he, or she, or it. Fisher's ...
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 ...