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 ...
Rogers, Hubert
(1898-1982) Canadian artist who studied art at Toronto Technical School before military service in World War I, then continued his training at other institutions, including the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts. In 1925, he began his professional career in New York, doing illustrations for newspapers, painting book covers, and painting covers for Pulp magazines like Adventure and The ...
Slough Feg
Also known as "The Lord Weird Slough Feg"; US heavy metal band, named after a character in the 2000 AD comic series Sláine. The group's first three albums – The Lord Weird Slough Feg (1998), Twilight of the Idols (1999) and Down Among the Deadmen (2000) – excavate a vein of Celtic-themed mythic Fantasy; but their fourth release, Traveller (2003) is a concept ...
Two Faces of Dr Jekyll, The
Film (1960; vt House of Fright; vt Jekyll's Inferno). Hammer Film Productions (UK), American International Pictures (US). Directed by Terence Fisher. Produced by Michael Carreras. Written by Wolf Mankowitz, very loosely based (uncredited) on Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) by Robert Louis Stevenson. Cast includes Dawn Addams, Christopher Lee and Paul ...
Chapbook
In the early nineteenth century this term described a pamphlet on any of a wide range of subjects – from sermons to sensational tales, often illustrated with woodcuts – sold not through bookshops but by "chapmen", who hawked their wares. In the later nineteenth century, the term began to acquire a contrived antiquarian air, and was used to designate a small book or pamphlet produced for collectors. Although the fake antiquarianism attached to the term has since faded, chapbooks 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 ...