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 ...
Woolfolk, William
(1917-2003) US Comics and Television writer and executive from 1941, and author who also wrote as by Winston Lyon. Most of his fiction, beginning with The Naked Hunter (1953), was nonfantastic. Batman vs the Fearsome Foursome (1966) as by Winston Lyon loosely novelized the film Batman (1966) (see Batman Films), the titular foursome being a team-up of regular ...
Bray, John Francis
(1809-1897) US author, in the UK 1822-1842; he published several economic tracts, some of them radical, like his first, Labour's Wrongs and Labour's Remedy (1839). Of sf interest is A Voyage from Utopia to Several Unknown Regions of the World: by Yarbfg: Translated from the American (written 1841-1842; 1957), which anticipated William Dean Howells's technique of presenting the views of a visitor from the ...
Half Japanese
American lo-fi punk band (sometimes written as ½ Japanese), formed in 1974 by the brothers Jad and David Fair. In their early days they were a shambolic but enthusiastic duo, comprising drums, electric guitar and strangulated vocals, with songs usually 1-2 minutes long; their first vinyl release, the 45rpm "Calling all Girls" (1977), had eleven tracks. Gradually they became more polished – or more studiously shambolic – adding further band members and longer songs; though Jad ...
Stockton, Kindred
Pseudonym of US engineer and author Geoffrey S Bok (? - ), whose first novel Deep Shade (2020), set in a Near Future Florida devastated by Climate Change, Ecological degradation, Overpopulation and Pollution, describes the inexorable growth of invasive flora and fauna in the ...
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 ...