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
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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 ...
Delmotte, Henri-Florent
(1798-1836) Belgian notary, bibliographer and author, of sf interest for Voyage pittoresque et industriel dans le Paraguay-Roux et la Palingénésie australe par Tridace-Nafé-Théobrome de Kaout't'chouk ["A Picturesque and Industrial Voyage to Paraguay-Roux and Southern Palingénésie by Tridace-Nafé-Théobrome de Kaout't'chouk"] [for full title see below] (1835 chap), a Satire of Belgian politics couched ...
Nicolson, Marjorie Hope
(1894-1981) US scholar and academic, in the latter role at Smith College from 1929 to 1941, and at Columbia University from 1941 until 1962. Some of her work – like Newton Demands the Muse: Newton's Opticks and the Eighteenth Century Poets (1946) – is indirectly useful to students of Proto SF. Of direct interest in the study of early works in the field are two books focusing on the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: ...
Allais, Alphonse
(1854-1905) French journalist and author, mostly of humorous pieces; his newspaper column, La Vie Drôle ["The Funny Life"] contained many skits and spoofs and other pieces, often fantastical. The various tales about Captain Cap appeared in this column and in other similar venues. Cap is based on a real person – Albert Caperon (1864-1898), a much-travelled adventurer and man about town – and Allais retired Captain Cap tales after Caperon's death, though he ...
Millers, Reinhold
(? - ) US author of a metaphysical sf tale, Time Exile (1972), whose protagonist is exiled to a tiny Island for thousands of years, until a "Time Patrol" (see Time Police) comes upon him. [JC]
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 ...