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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 ...
Ducornet, Rikki
Working name of US illustrator and author Erica Ducornet (1943- ), resident in various countries, including for a considerable time Canada, now in US; she began to publish work of genre interest with "Aunt Rose & Uncle Freidle" in Other Times for November 1975/January 1976. As a writer whose work seems to drop in on various genres (without, as it were, knocking), she has composed some of her surrealist ...
Ultravox
UK synth-pop band, who as "Ultravox!" (with exclamation mark) released a first eponymous album Ultravox! (1977). A modishly alienated work that uses synthesizers in a doomy and rather melodramatic manner, it nevertheless achieves some atmospheric moments, as in the urban noir of "Saturday Night In The City of the Dead", or the Robot-themed "I Want To Be A Machine". This last song, one of the band's early successes, situates itself in a subordinate ...
Niesewand, Peter
(1944-1983) South African-born journalist and author, in the UK after 1973; his reporting of the political situation in what was then Rhodesia, and his imprisonment there, are well-remembered. Of sf interest is Fallback (1982), a Technothriller in which a Computer expert involved in medical research is transformed into a Cyborg in order to prevent ...
Ikenberry, Kevin
(? - ) US author, who began to publish work of genre interest with "Illegal" in Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine for May 2012; much of his output has been Military SF, often couched in the form of Alternate Histories. The time-travelling (see Time Travel) protagonist of his first series, ...
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 ...