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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 ...
Alternate Worlds
An alternate world – some writers and commentators prefer the designation "alternative world" on grammatical grounds – is an account of Earth as it might have become in consequence of some hypothetical alteration in history. Many sf stories use Parallel Worlds as a frame in which multiple alternate worlds can coexist, sometimes interacting with one another. Previous editions of this encyclopedia discussed ...
Murray, Jacqueline
(? - ) UK author of Daughter of Atlantis (1958), describing the life of the daughter of the ruler of Atlantis; she is a Telepath and a healer, and performs good deeds ceaselessly; but soon the time will come when, burdened by the sins of its populace, the Island will sink. [JC]
Frankau, Pamela
(1908-1967) UK author who began publishing novels in 1927; daughter of Gilbert Frankau and his first wife Dorothea; known mainly for her work outside the sf field. Frankau's turbulent life was in some aspects interestingly parallel to that of James Tiptree Jr, though she did not disguise her identity. Several of her novels, such as The Bridge (1957), are fantasy; The Offshore Light (1952; ...
Generation Starships
For writers unwilling to power their Starships with Faster-than-Light drives or to make use of a Relativistic time contraction, there is a real problem in sending ships between the stars: the length of the voyage, which would normally span many human lifetimes. The usual answers are to put the crew into Suspended Animation, as in James ...
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 ...