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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 ...
Jupiter
Jupiter's importance in sf is derived from its status as the largest planet in the solar system and also the most accessible – because nearest to Earth – of the Gas Giants (which see). Its four major moons – Ganymede, Callisto, Io and Europa – were discovered by Galileo, but it was not until 1892 that the US astronomer Edward Barnard (1857-1923) discovered the fifth. About a dozen others were discovered in the twentieth century. The visible ...
Rice, Christopher
(1978- ) US author, son of Anne Rice, most of whose work has been fantasy and supernatural horror; some is in collaboration with his mother, with whom he continued her standalone The Mummy; Or, Ramses the Damned (1989) as the series Ramses the Damned [see Checklist below]. / He is of sf interest for the Burning Girl sequence beginning with Bone Music (2018), much of it reads like the considerably ...
Women in SF
In "The Image of Women in Science Fiction" (November 1970 Red Clay Reader) Joanna Russ wrote, "There are plenty of images of women in science fiction. There are hardly any women." This apprehension of the state of affairs has changed in the subsequent decades, chiefly due to the impact of Feminism and to the increasing numbers of women writing sf in the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s and the new century, though also to an increased ...
Cowley, Stewart
(1947- ) UK author who has also written as by Steven Caldwell and The Reverend Hubert Venables, most but not all of his work being spoof compilations. The first of these, the Terran Trade Authority Handbook beginning with the heavily illustrated Spacecraft 2000 to 2100 AD (coll 1978), comprises a series of "nonfiction" guides to the Space Opera-inflected Near Future, extending into more ...
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 ...