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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 ...
Dashner, James
(1972- ) US author whose work has been restricted to three Young Adult series, the first of which, The Jimmy Fincher Saga, beginning with A Door in the Woods (2003), is fantasy. The 13th Reality sequence, beginning with The Journal of Curious Letters (2008), sets its young protagonist the sf-coloured task of protecting the vast number of Alternate Worlds created ...
Edson, Milan C
(1839-1921) US civil servant, farmer and author of Solaris Farm: A Story of the Twentieth Century (1900), an agrarian Utopia (see Agriculture), in which physical health and cleanliness are emphasized. He was the father-in-law of Elmer Gates (1856-1923), founder of the Elmer Gates Laboratory of Psychology and Psychurgy, whose theories about stimulating brain-growth in adults were espoused by John W ...
Pearson, Martin
Pseudonym used by Donald A Wollheim for over twenty solo stories including the Ajax Calkins series and "Mimic" (December 1942 Astonishing Stories), the latter filmed as Mimic (1997) directed by Guillermo Del Toro. There is one collaborative Pearson title, "The Embassy" (March 1942 Astounding), which Wollheim ...
Leggett, M D
(1821-1896) US lawyer, doctor, educator, soldier, Commissioner of Patents under President Grant, businessman (founder of one of the firms that became General Electric) and author A Dream of a Modest Prophet (1890), which describes a Christian Utopia on Mars, whose inhabitants have embraced peace after the example of their own Christ Messiah, who seems essentially identical to Earth's. [JC]
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 ...