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.
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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 ...
Roberts, Bechhofer
(1894-1949) UK journalist and author of two thematically connected Near Future spoofs on bureaucracy, The Birdseed Pool (1940), where the chair of a Government control board, appointed through nepotism, fails to rationalize the market for birdseed as World War Two deepens; and the similar Sunrise in the West: An Absurdity (1945). His thrillers as by Ephesian do not contain fantasy. [JC]
Finlay, Adrianne
(? - ) US academic and author of two Young Adult novels of sf interest. Your One & Only (2018), set in a distant Near Future, follows the solitary life of the sole human being left after the whole of Homo sapiens has died off in a vast Pandemic (see End of the World); only ...
Wilson, Richard
(1920-1987) US author and director of the News Bureau of Syracuse University until his retirement in 1982; he was instrumental in persuading many sf writers to donate their personal archives to the university's George Arents Research Library. Involved in sf Fandom from an early age, he was a founder of the Futurians in the 1930s, publishing his first sf story, "Murder from Mars", with ...
Avon Comics
US Comics publisher, a division of Avon Books/Avon Periodicals Inc which published several sf and Horror titles between 1945 and 1955, when the imprint was discontinued. One title of some note was the anthology comic Strange Worlds, which saw eighteen issues on an irregular schedule from 1950 to 1952. This printed work by Alvin C Hollingsworth (1928-2000) – one of the first African-American ...
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 ...