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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 ...
Energy Beings
Immaterial Alien intelligences have long been a popular sf concept, occasionally "explained" by some form of Imaginary Science such as self-sustaining electromagnetic vortices or standing waves in space/time. Notable examples include the benevolent Arisians who as Secret Masters of the galaxy have directed human and other Evolution in E E ...
Brautigan, Richard
(1935-1984) US author and poet, known primarily for his work outside the sf field. Most of his whimsically surreal fiction – like A Confederate General from Big Sur (1964) or Trout Fishing in America (1967) – lies on the borderline of Fantasy, but does not pass over. In Watermelon Sugar (1968), set in an indeterminate hippie-pastoral setting, echoes the Post-Holocaust novels of ...
Brooks, Walter R
(1886-1958) US journalist and author, active from 1915, publishing at least 200 stories by 1944, and including a nonfiction stint with the New Yorker 1932-1933. His most obvious success during these years was the Mr Ed sequence of twenty-three tales about a talking horse and his drunken owner, beginning with "The Talking Horse" (18 September 1937 Liberty), some of them assembled as The Original Mr Ed (coll 1963); the Television ...
Daud, David
Pseudonym of UK author David Alexander Pennington (1954- ), whose Space Opera The Pulse of Eternity (1991) was billed as the first volume of the Starmaker series; further instalments did not follow. [DRL/SH]
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 ...