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 ...
Alexander, Alma
Pseudonym of Yugoslavian-born author Alma Alexander Hromic Deckert (1963- ), whose childhood was spent in Africa, her early adulthood in New Zealand, and who is currently in USA; active as an author of nonfantastic work from around 1995, and since that date mostly as an author of fantasy. Her first sequences, including the Changer of Days series, beginning with Changer of Days, Volume One (2001; vt The Hidden Queen 2005), and the ...
Nichols, Walter
(? - ) UK author of Simon Magus (1947), essentially an historical novel, though at one point suggests that – more than simply levitating, as the feared and revered gnostic magician was reputed to do – Magus is actually responsible for the Invention of an Airship. [JC]
Panofsky, Margaret
(? - ) US musician, specializing in the viola de gamba, and author; her first novel, The Last Shade Tree (2017), depicts with some complexity a Near Future planet manifestly at the verge of plunging into World War Three through the Young Adult eyes of a disaffected member of the Cherokee nation. His experience of the world, and what may be ...
Juvenile Series
When dime novels (see Dime-Novel SF) declined and disappeared in the 1900s – partly because of public outcry against their supposed evil effect on boys, and partly because of increasing competition from the Pulp magazines, which had become comparable in price – the torch of juvenile sf was taken up by a new format, illustrated hardcover juvenile book series, and the ideas in these began to range more widely. The ...
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 ...