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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 ...
Spindizzy
In its day, one of the best-loved items of sf Terminology. The spindizzy is the Antigravity Invention used to drive flying Cities through the Galaxy at Faster-than-Light speeds in James Blish's Okie series. This was collected as Cities in Flight (omni 1970), though Blish was using the ...
Walker, Rowland
(1876-1947) UK author of tales for boys. The Antihero of The Phantom Airman (1920) is a German airman unreconciled to the outcome of World War One, who establishes a pirate band whose depredations are made possible by a secret Invention; By Airship to the Tropics: The Amazing Adventures of Two Schoolboys (1923) unthreateningly deposits its protagonists in a ...
Belfield, Harry Wedgwood
(1893-1964) UK author, almost exclusively for boys (see Children's SF), whose first two works of sf interest for the Boys' Friend Library were A Temple of Thrills!: A Vivid, Long Complete Story of Desperate Peril and Adventure in India (1923 chap) as by Rupert Drake, which involves Rockets; and ...
Roberts, Jane
(1929-1984) US author perhaps best remembered for such speculative works as Dialogues of the Soul & Mortal Self in Time (1975), which take the form of a series of connected poems based, as was much of her voluminous speculative works, on lessons she claimed were channelled through her by an entity known as Seth. She began publishing work of genre interest with "The Red Wagon" for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in December 1956. Her ...
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 ...