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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 ...
Lin Yutang
Working name of Chinese-US author, essayist and academic Lin Yü-t'ang (1895-1976), his most important scholarly achievement (in strong contrast to his many volumes of popularized wisdom) being the Chinese-English Dictionary of Modern Usage (1972). In his one sf novel, The Unexpected Island (1955; vt Looking Beyond 1955), refugees from several world Holocausts establish a conservative ...
Plauger, P J
(1944- ) US physicist and author, involved professionally in computers. He began publishing sf with "Epicycle" in Analog for November 1973, and is best known for "Child of All Ages" (March 1975 Analog), about an immortal woman (see Immortality) who perpetually retains the body of a child (see Children in SF). Plauger won the ...
Page, Norvell W
(1906-1961) US author who specialized between 1930 and 1943 in Hero/Villain Pulp adventure, much of his production being novel-length stories for The Spider, featuring the eponymous nascent Superhero, whose powers and Weapons – including a thin silk web used for climbing buildings – always press the ...
Women in SF
In "The Image of Women in Science Fiction" (November 1970 Red Clay Reader) Joanna Russ wrote, "There are plenty of images of women in science fiction. There are hardly any women." This apprehension of the state of affairs has changed in the subsequent decades, chiefly due to the impact of Feminism and to the increasing numbers of women writing sf in the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s and the new century, though also to an increased ...
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 ...