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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 ...
Shapiro, Neil
(1949- ) US author who began to publish work of genre interest with "Now No One Waits" in If for December 1969, and who was moderately active for the next decade, releasing several stories and two novels: Planet Without a Name (1976), in which the exploitation of an apparently empty planet (see Colonization of Other Worlds) is affected by First Contact ...
Jones, J B
(1810-1866) US author best known for non-fantastic novels like Wild Western Scenes [for subtitle see Checklist] (1841 Baltimore Saturday Visitor; 1841), which did much to establish the literary legend of Daniel Boone (1734-1820), in part through the incorporation of some Tall Tales [see The Encyclopedia of Fantasy under links below] into the narrative. His sf novel, The Border War: A Tale of Disunion ...
Brown, Zachary
Pseudonym of unidentified US author (? - ) who under this name is of sf interest for their Icarus Corps sequence of Military SF tales comprising The Darkside War (2015), Titan's Fall (2016) and Jupiter Rising (2017 ebook). The action, in which grunts suffer and triumphalism is muted, takes place in a Solar System whose human inhabitants are ...
Hammond, Kay
Working name of Irish author Kathleen Eleanor Hammond (1900-1967), in England from her early years, who wrote several sf stories of interest in magazines published by Gerald G Swan, beginning with "Spider Fire" in Yankee Weird Shorts for March 1942; she also wrote a Lost Race tale, The Dark City (1942 chap). [JC]
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 ...