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.
Site updated on 25 July 2024
Sponsor of the day: Handheld Press
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 ...
Takeshita Ryūnosuke
(1984- ) Japanese lawyer and former child prodigy who enjoyed a brief and meteoric career as an author beginning with Tensai Eri-chan Kingyō o Tabeta ["Genius Eri Ate a Goldfish"] (1991). This, in turn, became the subject of some controversy when the seven-year-old Takeshita's book, daubed with understandably childish artwork, won the Masami Fukushima Writers Prize, leading to protests ...
Second Best Hospital in the Galaxy, The
US animated tv series (2024). Rat Ghost, Animal Pictures, Titmouse Inc, Amazon Studios. Created by Cirocco Dunlap. Directed by Joey Adams, Kacie Hermanson and Becks Wallace. Writers include Joanna Bradley, Cirocco Dunlap, Kirsten King, Anne Lane, Shauna McGarry and Asha Michelle Wilson. Voice cast includes Kieran Culkin, Andrew Dismukes, Stephanie Hsu, Natasha Lyonne, Keke Palmer, Lennon Parham, Maya Rudolph, Sam Smith and Gary Anthony Williams. Eight 27-minute episodes. / Dr. Sleech ...
Hall, Louisa
(1982- ) US academic, poet and author who is of sf interest for her second novel, Speak (2015), a multi-voiced tale moderated and in part iterated by AIs, who have come to something like self-consciousness through a radical concept underlying their development: that consciousness is not generated by number-crunching but through the centripetal magnetism through time of storytelling. The figures depicted range from a young seventeenth ...
Little Badger, Darcie
(1987- ) US oceanographer and author much of whose work, most of it definable as fantasy or horror, directly and powerfully reflects her family background as a member of the Lipan Apache Tribe of Texas. She began to publish work of genre interest with "First Ride of the Day" in Vignettes from the End of the World (anth 2014) edited by Jacob Haddon. Her first novel, the Young Adult Elatsoe [pronounced el-at-so-ay] ...
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 ...