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 ...
Gatch, Tom Jr
Working name of Thomas Leigh Gatch (1925-1974), US West Point graduate, author, playwright and army reservist. His Alternate-History sf novel, King Julian (1954), depicts the USA as a monarchy – the Jonbar Point leading to this timeline being that when asked, George Washington did accept the crown of the Americas. In the novel's alternate present day, his descendants still rule. Gatch vanished during an ...
Wicks, Mark
(? -? ) UK author whose To Mars Via the Moon: An Astronomical Story (1911) recounts the construction of a Spaceship capable of taking its bereaved solitary builder first to the Moon and then to Mars, which is described in accordance with the theories of Percival Lowell; here he finds a Utopia, and the ...
Eaton Award
This Award has been presented since 2008 by the University of California at Riverside for life achievement in science fiction, and is named in memory of J Lloyd Eaton (see J Lloyd Eaton Collection). Winners may be announced well in advance of the presentation, as with the July 2010 announcement of Harlan Ellison's 2011 award. A previous incarnation of the award was given for notable ...
Bawden, Edward
(1903-1989) UK painter and illustrator, conspicuously versatile and active from the mid-1920s to the end of his life; his vivid graphic style – in which spaces and perspectives are controlled through powerfully architectonic linear patterning enabled through his innovative skill as a lino cutter – became very widely known in Britain. He provided illustrations and covers for several books of genre interest, including (by dates of editions he illustrated) Lance de Giberne ...
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 ...