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
Sponsor of the day: The League of Fan Funds
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 ...
Mitchison, G R
(1894-1970) UK politician, lawyer and author, usually known as Dick Mitchison, married to Naomi Mitchison. He is of sf interest for a Near Future Utopia, The First Workers' Government; Or, New Times for Henry Dubb (1934), which treats the ascent of socialism with favour. Connected thematically with this was the slightly earlier ...
Kiernan, Stephen P
(1960- ) US journalist, editor and author whose first book, Last Rights: Rescuing the End of Life from the Medical System (2006), eloquently presents the case adumbrated in its subtitle, demanding that doctors and legislators arouse themselves to face some genuinely difficult issues. His interest in the end (and ends) of life is reflected in his sf novel, The Curiosity (2013), a Sleeper Awakes whose central ...
Portugal
Inspired by literary trends of the period, Portuguese Proto-Sf novels in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries depicted future or remote Utopian societies that are visited and discussed at length by travelers from the present world and time. Great care is given to the shifts in world order and morality and less to scientific achievements, including the modes of Transportation to those ...
Aandahl, Vance
(1942- ) US teacher and author who began to publish short stories with "It's a Great Big Wonderful Universe" for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in November 1960, and who remained active as an author of short fiction until the mid-1990s, publishing at least 30 tales over that period, most of them for F&SF. His work is noted for its wry ingenuity, and several stories have been anthologized. No ...
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 ...