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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 ...
Parkinson, Keith
(1958-2005) American artist. He received artistic training at the University of Michigan and the Kendall School of Design before beginning his career in advertising. Along with Clyde Caldwell, Jeff Easley, and Larry D Elmore, Parkinson then went to work for TSR and, during the next five years, produced numerous illustrations for the company's books, magazines, calendars, and Games. While such assignments naturally involved a focus on ...
Cho, Zen
(1986- ) Malaysian author now resident in the UK, where she practices as a solicitor. She began publishing short fiction with "The Guest" in Expanded Horizons for November 2010, making her first professional sale in the following year with "起狮，行礼" ["Rising Lion – The Lion Bows"] in Strange Horizons for 21 March 2011. / Cho's first foray into longer ...
d'Arch Smith, Timothy
(1936- ) UK bibliographer, antiquarian bookseller, and author, whose wit and scholarly predilections – Montague Summers (see Bibliographies), Aleister Crowley, rock 'n' roll, and cricket (see Games and Sports) – inform his contribution to the genre. Alembic (1992) is a work of Hard SF that joins alchemy, rock 'n' roll (see ...
Brown, Harrison
(1917-1986) US scientist and author whose nonfiction The Challenge of Man's Future (1954) combines demographical, ecological and energy concerns in a pioneering work of great admonitory influence. His sf novel, The Cassiopeia Affair (1968) with Chloe Zerwick, treats fictionally the same problems through a story about a possibly bogus message from the stars that may keep mankind from destroying itself in a terminal conflagration. ...
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 ...