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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 ...
Messac, Régis
(1893-1945) French academic, translator and author who published widely under a number of pseudonyms, none of them used for stories of the fantastic. He was in active service throughout World War One, where his pacifism was confirmed; his later Communist affiliations (presumably) occasioned his deportation in 1943 by the German government and incarceration in various camps until his death, probably in January 1945, in the Gross-Rosen complex, or Dora, or ...
Repton, Humphry
(1752-1818) UK landscape gardener, of great significance as theorist and practitioner, his successful gardens expressing an early Romantic sense of the picturesque, in contrast to the domineering formalism of earlier styles. He is of sf interest for one short story, "From a Private Mad-House" (in Variety: A Collection of Essays: Written in the Year 1787, anth 1788), which was republished as "Voyage to the Moon" (in Odd Whims; And Miscellanies, coll 1804 2vols), in ...
Jack Gaughan Award
In full, the Jack Gaughan Award for Best Emerging Artist. Named in honour of artist Jack Gaughan and often referred to simply as the Gaughan Award, this is presented annually by NESFA, the New England Science Fiction Association, to an artist who has achieved professional status within the past five years. The winner is selected by a panel of judges. In practice, the qualification "within the past five years" seems to be applied fairly elastically; Richard ...
Travel Guides
These occasionally feature in sf, the most famous of all being Douglas Adams's comic creation The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy (which see) – a guide that gives little space to such minor destinations as Earth, famously listed only as "Harmless" and amended after extensive further research to "Mostly harmless". In older sf, Jack Vance makes witty use of ...
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 ...