SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Friday 10 July 2026
Welcome to the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Fourth Edition. Some sample entries appear below. Click here for the Introduction; here for what we mean by Science Fiction; here for the masthead; here for some Statistics; here for the 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 7 July 2026
Sponsor of the day: Andy Richards of Cold Tonnage Books
Nova Awards
UK Fandom-based Awards presented from 1973 to 2014 for Fanzine-related activity, under the auspices of Britain's second regular convention, the annual and still continuing Novacon (which see). For its first four years the Nova Award was selected by a panel of knowledgable fan judges from fanzine titles nominated by Novacon members. The first three awards were given for a specific issue ...
Rocklynne, Ross
Working name of US author Ross Louis Rocklin (1913-1988) for his sf stories, most of which appeared in such magazines as Astounding from the mid-1930s up to 1947, beginning with "Man of Iron" for Astounding in 1935. He specialized in Space-Opera plots constructed around sometimes ingenious "scientific" problems, such as how to escape from the centre of a hollow planet in "At the Center of Gravity" (June 1936 ...
Strand Magazine, The
UK magazine published monthly from January 1891 to March 1950, 710 issues (May/June 1947 issue combined), published by George Newnes Ltd, London; edited until December 1930 by H Greenhough Smith and subsequently by Reeves Shaw (1931-1941), R J Minney (1941-1942), Reginald Pound (1942-1946) and Macdonald Hastings (1946-1950). The Strand was Britain's premier magazine of general interest and popular fiction. Newnes took advantage of new printing techniques to have a heavily illustrated ...
Cane, Nancy
Pseudonym of US romance author Nancy J Cohen (1948- ), best known under her own name for the Bad Hair Day sequence of nonfantastic mysteries beginning with Permed to Death (1999) and continuing for many volumes [not here listed]. Her first work of sf interest, the Light-Years Trilogy beginning with Circle of Light (1994), is a Space Opera engaging many race in interstellar ...
Weller, Archie
(1957- ) Australian author whose second novel, Land of the Golden Clouds (1998), is set in a Ruined Earth Australia three millennia hence, long after a destructive nuclear World War Three; it is built around its varied protagonists' epic journey across the great continent, undergoing experiences typical of the ...
Clute, John
(1940- ) Canadian critic, editor and author, in the UK from 1969; married to Judith Clute from 1964, partner of Elizabeth Hand since 1996. He began to publish work of genre interest with an sf-tinged poem "Carcajou Lament" in Triquarterly for Winter 1960 [ie Autumn 1959]; he began consistently publishing sf reviews in his "New Fiction" column for the Toronto Star ...