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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 ...
Wallace, King
(? -? ) US author whose sf novel, The Next War: A Prediction (1892), not untypically for its time and place of origin, plays on white racial fears of Black uprisings in the Near Future (see Race in SF). In this case, after failing to Poison all American whites, the Blacks lose the ensuing rebellion and disperse into the hinterlands, where they become ...
Bloom, Rachel
(?1987- ) US comedian, author and performer of the single "Fuck Me, Ray Bradbury" (2010). This song and its accompanying video (in which the pneumatic Ms Bloom poses in a schoolgirl costume clutching a photograph of Ray Bradbury to her bosom) parlayed its geeky lubriciousness into internet success. Though in essence a novelty song it was well-received by sf fans, becoming only the second musical text to be nominated for a ...
Romilus, Arn
A Curtis Warren House Name used by Brian Holloway for one novel and by Denis Hughes for two. [JC/DRL]
Glass, Matthew
Pseudonym of Australian-born doctor and author (1954- ), in medical practice in the UK for several years, whose first novel, Ultimatum (2009), is set mostly in a Near Future America where, by 2032, Climate Change has begun radically to affect coastal areas, with an estimated 25,000,000 citizens forced to retreat from the rising seas. These dire circumstances are soon submerged in ...
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 ...