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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 ...
Howard, Robert E
(1906-1936) US author, along with H P Lovecraft the central fashioner of generic American fantastic fiction before 1940, excluding sf: in Howard's case, Sword and Sorcery, and in Lovecraft's case supernatural horror as such (but also Horror in SF). Howard's few contributions to Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos do not bring out the sf elements, and he did not ...
Reitmeister, Louis Aaron
(1903-1975) US author of If Tomorrow Comes (1934), a Utopia in which an Alien from another planet, given a tour by two humans, one of whom constantly deprecates Earthly civilization; the alien in turn extols life on the planet Jedelar, whose inhabitants are unfailingly rational, needing no government to keep them in check. [JC]
Pendray, G Edward
(1901-1987) US public relations consultant, author and rocket scientist, a founding member of the American Interplanetary Society in 1931, and author of several nonfiction works, including Men, Mirrors and Stars (1935), The Coming Age of Rocket Power (1945) and Rocket Development (anth 1948) edited with Esther Goddard and Robert Goddard; he was involved in installing Time Capsules in both the 1939 and 1964 New York World's Fairs. As Gawain Edwards he ...
Bernstein, Al
(1918-1996) US author who wrote for SF Magazines as Donald Bern (seven stories, 1940-1944), Albert Bernsen (one story in 1950) and Robert Ray (one story in 1950; other magazine appearances of this name are Robert Ray). He began to publish work of genre interest with "The Man Who Knew All the Answers" in Amazing for August 1940 as by Donald Bern. His work was light-hearted and competent, though "If ...
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 ...