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 ...
Cook, Kenneth
(1929-1987) Australian author of Play Little Victims (1978 chap), a Satire depicting a world inherited by rational Mice after 2000, who attempt to control mouse Overpopulation by literally applying texts left by an extinct humanity, on the apprehension that all human activities – including War, famine, genocide and the automobile – were introduced in order to ...
Bould, Mark
(1968- ) Critic, editor and academic based at the University of the West of England, Bristol. Founding co-editor (with Sherryl Vint) of Science Fiction Film and Television Journal, former co-editor (from 2001-2005) of Historical Materialism: Research in Critical Marxist Theory; advisory editorial board member for Extrapolation, Paradoxa: Studies in World Literary Genres and ...
Jolley, Norman
(1916-2002) US actor, film writer and producer who worked in many areas including Westerns and mysteries; his work of genre interest begins with his on-screen portrayal of the Villain Agent X in the Television series Space Patrol (1950-1955). He quickly became head screenwriter for this series, employing his background in engineering (from a University of Wisconsin ...
Watkins, Clare Vaye
(1984- ) US academic and author in whose early stories, assembled in Battleborn: Stories (coll 2012), various characters adhere to the Nevada landscape where their destinies generally unfold; autobiographical elements – Watkins is the daughter of Paul Watkins (1950-1990), who was involved in the Manson Family tragedies – surface in some of these tales, which generally permit but do not advocate readings more intense than realist conventions ...
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 ...