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 ...
Holsinger, Bruce
(? - ) US academic, specializing in medieval manuscripts, and author who, after nonfiction studies like Music, Body, and Desire in Medieval Culture (2001), began publishing fiction with the John Gower sequence of fantasticated historical detections. The first volume, A Burnable Book (2014), features the historical poet John Gower (1330-1408) in a quest for a mysterious manuscript whose contents contain accurate ...
Niemann, August
(1839-1919) German editor and author, usually on military matters, whose Future War novel, Der Weltkrieg – Deutsche Träume (1904; trans J H Freese as The Coming Conquest of England 1904), does not anticipate World War One very precisely, though the Near Future conflict envisioned is worldwide, with Britain losing in India and at ...
Petaja, Emil
(1915-2000) US author of Finnish descent, most of whose earlier fiction was fantasy rather than sf; occasionally he wrote as E Theodore Pine (once with Henry L Hasse), though only in magazines. He began publishing in 1935 with "The Two Doors" for the semiprozine Unusual Stories; his first professional sale was "Time Will Tell" for Amazing in June 1942. Some of his early work can be found in ...
Sheena, Queen of the Jungle
1. US Comic strip created by Will Eisner, S M "Jerry" Iger (using the pseudonym W Morgan Thomas) and possibly Mort Meskin, who was the artist for the early issues. Though American in origin, the strip actually debuted in the UK magazine Wags #46 (January 1938); stateside, Sheena first appeared in Jumbo Comics #1 (September 1938) and continued in every issue including its last, #167 in March 1953. The comic book series ...
Robinson, Roger
(1943- ) UK computer programmer, bibliographer and publisher, active in UK Fandom for many years. The Writings of Henry Kenneth Bulmer (1983 chap; rev 1984 chap) is an exhaustive Bibliography of one of the most prolific sf writers, Kenneth Bulmer, and Who's Hugh?: An SF Reader's Guide to Pseudonyms (1987) is similarly exhaustive in its ...