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 ...
Wallace, Jon
(? - ) UK author, musician and comedian, working with Jon Cross in the comedy sketch duo Scanida-Hus and recording music as Ompsk and Nosp. He began to publish work of genre interest with "The Walrus and the Carpenter" in Interzone for July/August 2011. The Kenstibec sequence comprising Barricade (2014) and Steeple (2015) depicts a Near Future ...
Squires, Susan
(? - ) US author, mostly of paranormal romances of little direct sf interest, though some of her tales competently incorporate sf into the surge, an example being the Near Future Body Electric (2002), whose disaffected female protagonist creates an AI whose personality inhabits a Cyberpunk-inflected Virtual Reality. Very ...
Palmer, Diana
Pseudonym of US author Susan Spaeth Kyle (1946- ), who has also published occasionally under her own name; most of her many novels are Westerns or romance tales, usually as by Palmer. Of sf interest is The Morcai Battalion (1980; rev 2008 as by Palmer), a Space Opera set in a Galactic Empire riven by a vast war. [JC]
Amazing Spider-Man, The
1. US tv series (1977-1979). Charles Fries Productions for CBS-TV. Character created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko for Marvel Comics, debuting in Amazing Fantasy #15 (August 1962) and appearing in his own title The Amazing Spider-Man from March 1963. Produced by Robert Jones, Lionel E Siegel, Edward Montagne. Directors included Cliff Bole, Michael Caffey, Don MacDougall. ...
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 ...