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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 ...
Easterbrook, Neil
(1957- ) US critic, academic, editorial consultant for Science Fiction Studies since 2002, member of the editorial advisory board for Extrapolation since 2008, of the Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts since 2009 and of Science Fiction Film and Television since 2010. / Easterbrook's reviews have appeared in ...
Scortia, Thomas N
(1926-1986) US chemist and author, active in solid-propellant research in the aerospace industry during the 1960s before becoming a full-time writer in 1970. He had already been publishing craftsmanlike stories for sixteen years, beginning with "The Prodigy" for Science Fiction Adventures in March 1954; known pseudonyms for short work in the sf magazines are Scott Nichols and Gerald MacDow (Arthur R Kurtz has also been given as a Scortia ...
Valentine, Victor
(1918-1976) Australian author, in the UK for many years from 1950, whose Cure for Death (1960) features a Ray that not only cures cancer and ageing (see Immortality) but also dissociates its patients from their own past lives in a kind of Memory Edit. [JC]
Science Fiction Adventures
Title used on two US Digest-size magazines during the 1950s, and on one UK magazine that began as a reprint and continued, using original material, after its parent – the second US magazine – folded. The title was used also as a variant title of Science Fiction Classics, January-May 1973, September and November 1974. / 1. The first US magazine published nine issues November 1952 to June 1954. #1 was ...
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 ...