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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 ...
Ghosh, Amitav
(1956- ) Indian author now resident in the US, whose sf novel, The Calcutta Chromosome: A Novel of Fevers, Delirium & Discovery (1992), won the Arthur C Clarke Award. Within a thriller frame, it provides a searching exploration of culture, ethics, and the possibilities of Genetics. Gun Island (2019) hovers slightly uneasily at the edge of the very ...
Gale, Floyd C
(1918-1997) Working name of Floyd C Gold, US critic and author, the brother of H L Gold. He began to publish work of genre interest with "Treachery on Planetoid 41" for Amazing in June 1940, a tale of two astronauts shipwrecked on an Asteroid with insufficient supplies to support both before rescue. He began writing the "Galaxy's Five Star Shelf" book review column in Galaxy for ...
Quiller-Couch, Sir Arthur
(1863-1944) UK poet, anthologist, academic and author, active as a poet (see Poetry) from the early 1880s, and as an author of novels and tales, many at least partly set in his native Cornwall, from the publication of his first full-length story, Dead Man's Rock: A Romance (1887) as by Q, which revolves around the cursed Great Ruby of Ceylon; for many years he continued to write as by Q, sometimes appending his full name, and as A T Quiller-Couch. ...
Friswell, Hain
(1825-1878) UK journalist and author, active from about 1851 in several genres. Blackwood's Comic Zadkiel: An Almanac at Once Prophetical and Profitable [for full title see Checklist] (coll 1855) is a spoof almanac in which the Predictions of its presenter/protagonist Zadkiel are dramatized, sometimes in sf form, including "'Grand Nephew Tom's Cabin,' An Extract From a Sequel Some Sixty Years After the Date of Mrs. Stowe's Volume", a ...
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 ...