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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 ...
Gibson, Edward
(1936- ) US Skylab astronaut whose sf novel, Reach (1989), set in the more remote Near Future, argues for a continuation of the space programme via the story of an expedition sent to discover the nature of an Alien lifeform. This proves unfriendly; but the case for human exploration of our potential domain is presented with commendable clarity. In the Wrong Hands (1992), set on the ...
Rutherford, Meg
(1932-2006) Australian sculptor, illustrator and author, in UK at least intermittently from 1958; she is of some sf interest for The Beautiful Island (graph 1969), which is collage-based. The narrative is ostensibly pure fantasy – birds persuade the battered houses and edifices of northern lands to migrate south to a paradisal Island – but uses proto-Steampunk devices literally to carry the tale, for the ...
Lindsay, Vachel
(1879-1931) US poet, the clanging visionary primitivism of whose best-known work – the poems assembled in The Congo and Other Poems (coll 1914) – may have been ingenuous; some of the poems in Going-to-the-Sun (coll 1923) are of sf interest (see Poetry), one of them being adapted by John Clute for his sf novel Appleseed (2001). His Cinema criticism – ...
Latham, Philip
Pseudonym used for his sf by US astronomer Robert Shirley Richardson (1902-1981). He began publishing sf in the magazines with "N Day" (January 1946 Astounding), and continued to 1977, with twenty or so stories in all; many had astronomical themes (see Astronomy). The most anthologized is "The Xi Effect" (January 1950 Astounding), in which Earth is found to be in a segment of the Universe that is contracting ...
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 ...