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 ...
Malcolm, Ian
(1927- ) Canadian author of RIP 7 (1976) a spoofish Satire on Sex set in the Near Future when a love Drug causes a worldwide orgy. [JC]
Ishihara Fujio
(1933- ) Japanese sf author, science writer, inventor and bibliographer, who chronicled the publishing history of the genre in Japan in the days before the internet. A graduate in electronics from Waseda University, Ishihara initially worked in telecommunications for the Japanese phone company NTT, before becoming a professor at Tamagawa University. His debut work "Kōsoku Dōro" ["Highway"] (August 1965 S-F Magazine; fixup as ...
Randle, Kevin D
(1949- ) US author who served in the Army as a helicopter pilot in Vietnam 1968-1969 and in the Air Force as an Intelligence Officer 1976-1986; he has written nonfantastic military fiction as by Eric Helm and Steve MacKenzie [not listed in Checklist below]. He began publishing sf with "Future War" for Combat Illustrated in 1978, but became an active writer only in the 1980s, beginning two sequences in 1980 and 1986 respectively, all titles in collaboration with ...
Roberts, W Adolphe
(1886-1962) Jamaican editor, poet, journalist and author, in USA 1904-1949, initially involved in American literary life, who also wrote as by Stephen Endicott; his first book, Pierrot Wounded (coll 1919) was a volume of poems inspired by his apparently unfulfilled relationship with Edna St Vincent Millay; in his later career he became a significant advocate for Jamaican independence. He is credited as having written the first African American mystery novel in English, ...
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 ...