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.
Site updated on 25 July 2024
Sponsor of the day: The League of Fan Funds
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 ...
Oliphant, Laurence
(1829-1888) South African-born UK adventurer, diplomat politician and author, well known for nonfiction texts which described his own adventures in Asia, Africa and South America while at the same time advocating solutions to the "problems" he encountered, whether social or military; on more than one occasion these texts were tacitly sponsored by the UK Foreign Office. In 1867, he joined an American Utopian community, the Brotherhood of the New Life, founded by the ...
Pines, Ned L
(1905-1990) US magazine and book publisher who in 1931 founded a group of magazines with Thrilling in the title: Thrilling Detective, Thrilling Love, etc. These became part of the Pines Publications group (which Pines served as president 1929-1961), whose associated companies included Standard Comics, Standard Magazines, Beacon Magazines and Better Publications. In 1936 Pines bought Gernsback's Wonder Stories and retitled it ...
Frakes, Jonathan
(1952- ) US actor, best known for his role as Commander William T Riker in all 187 episodes of the second Star Trek television series, Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987-1994); he also directed several episodes of this and other Star Trek series as well as the films Star Trek: First Contact (1996) and Star Trek: Insurrection (1998). His sf ...
Rose, Mark
(1939- ) US academic and author whose assistance in preparing Kingsley Amis's New Maps of Hell (1960) was acknowledged by its author. An apocalyptic Post-Holocaust short story, "We Would See a Sign" in Spectrum 3 (anth 1963) edited by Amis and Robert Conquest, did not lead to a fiction career, and Rose remains best known in the sf field ...
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 ...