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
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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 ...
Amazing Stories
"The magazine of scientifiction", with whose founding Hugo Gernsback announced the existence of sf as a distinct literary species. It was initially a letter-sized SF Magazine issued monthly by Gernsback's Experimenter Publishing Company as a companion to Science and Invention and Radio News, first issue dated April 1926, and was the first magazine to publish science fiction ...
Home-Gall, William Benjamin
(1861-1933) Hong Kong-born author, in UK from early childhood, much of whose work was written for Boys' Papers, including several sf tales as by Reginald Wray, a typical title being The Hidden World (29 May-12 June 1915 Boys' Friend; 1920 chap). Beyond the Northern Lights: Tale of Stange Adventure in Unknown Seas (1903) as by Reginald Wray is a Lost-World tale set near the North Pole; ...
Hammill, Peter
British composer and musician, best known as the lead singer of Van der Graaf Generator. His solo releases, most of them similar to the prog-rock complexities of his group work, have been varied and, often, rather wayward. Popular success has eluded him although he inspires great devotion in his fans. "Imperial Zeppelin", on Hammill's first solo album Fool's Mate (1971), is an unusual example of steampunk SF-pop, possibly indebted to ...
Dietrich, Bryan D
(1965- ) US academic associated with Newman University, Wichita, Kansas, and poet (see Poetry) whose first collection, Krypton Nights: Poems (coll 2002 chap; exp vt Single Bound: Krypton Nights / Amazon Days 2018), established a continuing pattern in which sets of poems are grouped around particular figures or themes, in this case the Superhero Superman ...
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 ...