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 ...
Lewis, Oscar
(1893-1992) US editor and author active from 1912 as an author of magazine stories for boys; not to be confused with the anthropologist Oscar Lewis (1914-1970). His Alternate-History novel, The Lost Years: A Biographical Fantasy (1951), depicts through the recorded reactions of contemporaries the last years of Abraham Lincoln in a world where he was never assassinated. [JC]
Jefferson, Alan
(? - ) UK amateur musician and artist whose sole release, Galactic Nightmare (1986) is a concept album about a passenger "starliner" (see Starship) which crash-lands on the planet Zeon. After being attacked by an Alien Monster, the survivors meet a man who has aged prematurely after being captured by a race called The ...
Woodley, Richard
(1937- ) Author, presumably US, active from the 1970s through the 1990s, who has published some twenty novels in various genres – almost all Cinema or Television Ties. Sf examples listed below are chiefly based on the television series The Man from Atlantis (1977-1978). Film ties include novelizations of ...
Wellman, Manly Wade
(1903-1986) Portuguese West Africa-born author (1903-1986), in America from the age of six, prolific in both Fantasy and sf, though far more significant for works in the former; he also wrote Westerns – though less frequently than did his brother, Paul I Wellman (1898-1966) – and crime fiction, most of his nonfantastic books appearing between 1947 and 1961. Wellman began to publish work of genre interest with a fantasy, "Back ...
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 ...