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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 ...
Tabler, Joseph
(1949- ) US abody surfer, bookseller and author, based for all his activities in California; he ran the well-known Joseph Tabler Books in San Diego 1989-1999. Of his thrillers, three have some sf interest: Capitol Hill Clones (1981), a political Satire involving a scatty use of Clones; The Microwave Caper (1981), in which a mysterious ...
Pier, Arthur Stanwood
(1874-1966) US author, best-known for the nonfantastic St Timothy's series of tales set at a boys' school; of sf interest God's Secret (1935), a Near Future tale dealing with the consequences of the discovery of an Immortality serum. [JC]
Newton, W Douglas
Working name of Irish author Wilfrid Bernard Michael Newton (1884-1951), active from around 1907 in British magazines, where he published a wide variety of fiction including the occult, the supernatural, thrillers and sf; he also wrote as by Bernard Birmingham, W N Douglas, John Halstead, John How and Ian Irons. His first sf novels are set in the Near Future, and speculate upon the possibility of Invasion and ...
Jacobs, Harvey
(1930-2017) US author whose work, much of it taking on a Magic-Realist glow, generally focused on the nature and fate of the urban Jew, especially in New York. He began publishing work of some genre interest with "A Wind Age" for Tomorrow in 1951; his more fable-like tales, many of which appear in The Egg of the Glak and Other Stories (coll 1969) and My Rose & My Glove: Stories (Real and Surreal) ...
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 ...