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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 ...
Kelly, David J
(? - ) US author of the routine Killstar sequence of Science Fantasy adventures comprising The Baalbak Quest (1980) and Tower of Despair (1980), in which humanity is saved from a terrible threat. [JC]
Lovecraft, H P
(1890-1937) US author who spent almost all his life in Providence, Rhode Island, maintaining extensive social contacts mainly by mail. He was an important figure by correspondence in the careers of many authors who later published work clearly influenced by him; and the correspondence between him and Robert E Howard illuminates these two solitary (but intensely communicative) figures. He joined the United Amateur Press Association (see ...
Definitions of SF
The term "science fiction" came into general use in the 1930s, an early appearance being in Hugo Gernsback's editorial to #1 of Wonder Stories (June 1929). Rather later in the UK, the term was used in Scoops (Summer 1934 and later) to describe individual stories, and Walter Gillings used the term on the cover of the first issue of ...
Clancy, Tom
(1947-2013) US author of Cold War thrillers and other similar works, at least one of which – Red Storm Rising (1986), in which war breaks out between NATO and the USSR after a mid-1980s Islamic terrorist attack against Soviet oil facilities – is a standalone Technothriller that can now be read as an exercise in the Dreadful Warning. Of somewhat greater sf interest is the long Jack Ryan/John Clark ...
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 ...