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: The League of Fan Funds
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 ...
Curtis, Philip
(1920-2012) UK teacher and author who is best known for the Mr Browser sequence of Young Adult sf novels, beginning with Mr Browser and the Brain Sharpeners (1979; vt Invasion of the Brain Sharpeners 1981), which comically, though sometimes pedantically, engage teachers and others with various challenges, some of them instigated by Aliens. The eponymous villains of ...
Macleod, Joseph Gordon
(1903-1984) UK barrister, poet, broadcaster and author, whose sf Satire, Overture to Cambridge: A Satirical Story (1936), based on his own unpublished play, eschews the Modernist bent of his poetry in its unpacking of the vision of a Utopian Britain – based insecurely on the writings of Aldous Huxley – that comes to a revolutionary orator in ...
British Science Fiction Association Award
This Award developed from the original British Fantasy Award, which was sponsored by the British Science Fiction Association and initially made to a writer: John Brunner won the first in 1966. Following various organizational difficulties the award was relaunched in 1970 as the British Science Fiction Association Award – usually ...
van Lorne, Warner
Pseudonym of US author Nelson Tremaine (1907-1971), author under that name of a number of stories in Astounding Science-Fiction from July 1935 to January 1939, plus "Wanted: 7 Fearless Engineers!" (February 1939 Amazing). "The Blue-Men of Yrano" (January 1939 Astounding) is probably the best remembered. His brother, F Orlin Tremaine, wrote at least one van Lorne story. [MJE]
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 ...