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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 ...
Nicholson, Joseph Shield
(1850-1927) UK mathematician, economist and author, in Scotland from 1880, most famous for Principles of Political Economic (1893-1901 3vols), also well-known for his journalism. He is of sf interest for two novels. Thoth: A Romance (1888; exp 1889) is an impressive Lost-World novel set around 400 BCE, where a City in the North African desert, settled 2,000 years earlier, has benefited from the ...
Thomas, Richard
(1967- ) US author whose short fiction, which is mostly horror, has been assembled as Herniated Roots (coll 2012), Staring into the Abyss (coll 2013) and Tribulations (coll 2016). His first novel, Transubstantiate (2010), is a noirish thriller set in a Disaster-afflicted world – an experiment in controlling Overpopulation has catastrophically ...
Gatch, Tom Jr
Working name of Thomas Leigh Gatch (1925-1974), US West Point graduate, author, playwright and army reservist. His Alternate-History sf novel, King Julian (1954), depicts the USA as a monarchy – the Jonbar Point leading to this timeline being that when asked, George Washington did accept the crown of the Americas. In the novel's alternate present day, his descendants still rule. Gatch vanished during an ...
Smollett, Tobias
(1721-1771) Scottish medical practitioner (he did not gain a degree), journalist, translator, poet and author whose reputation has always suffered – certainly among the more dignified critics – through the sometimes distorting savagery of his Satire, a saeva indignatio he shares with other eighteenth century authors like Jonathan Swift. His first significant work of fiction in this vein, ...
Robinson, Roger
(1943- ) UK computer programmer, bibliographer and publisher, active in UK Fandom for many years. The Writings of Henry Kenneth Bulmer (1983 chap; rev 1984 chap) is an exhaustive Bibliography of one of the most prolific sf writers, Kenneth Bulmer, and Who's Hugh?: An SF Reader's Guide to Pseudonyms (1987) is similarly exhaustive in its ...