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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 ...
Mandrake the Magician
US newspaper Comic strip (1934-2013) created by Lee Falk – also the creator of The Phantom – and for many years drawn by Phil Davis (1906-1964); subsequently by Fred Fredericks (1929-2015), who also wrote the strip for many years after Falk's death but retired in 2013. The caped and top-hatted Mandrake is a master of Hypnosis, imposing his illusions on criminals, ...
Senior, W A
(1953- ) US academic, administratively involved with the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts for many years, serving as President 1994-1998 and between 2002 and 2004; also involved as an organizer of the Association's annual conference, the International Conference for the Fantastic in the Arts. As a critic, he is best known for Stephen R. Donaldson's Chronicles of Thomas Covenant: Variations on the Fantasy Tradition ...
Annandale, David
(1967- ) Canadian author who began to publish work of genre interest with "Sick" in Aberrations #8 for 1993, one of his infrequent works not Tied to the Warhammer 40,000 Wargame, with whose Medieval Futurist exorbitances he seems comfortable. [JC]
Way, Peter
(1936-1991) UK author whose first novel, The Kretzmer Syndrome (1968), is a Near-Future tale set in a bleak conformist UK susceptible to the theories of the eponymous scientist, who articulates Psychohistory laws that risk translating the country into a rigid Dystopia enabled by the Kretzmer Syndrome, which saps free will. Sunrise (1979) is set 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 ...