SF Encyclopedia Home Page
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.
Site updated on 25 July 2024
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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 ...
Children's SF
For there to exist a term designating a category of fiction written for children, it was necessary to invent a category of human designated as children. "In medieval society, the idea [more properly "feeling"] of childhood did not exist", Philippe Ariès (1914-1984) claimed in L'Enfant et la Vie Familiale sous l'Ancien Régime (1960; trans Robert Baldick as Centuries of Childhood 1962). Although this famous over-bald assertion was soon challenged, it ...
Mitchison, G R
(1894-1970) UK politician, lawyer and author, usually known as Dick Mitchison, married to Naomi Mitchison. He is of sf interest for a Near Future Utopia, The First Workers' Government; Or, New Times for Henry Dubb (1934), which treats the ascent of socialism with favour. Connected thematically with this was the slightly earlier ...
Vallejo, Dorian
(1968- ) American artist, son of noted artist Boris Vallejo. After receiving formal training in art at his father's insistence, Vallejo began garnering cover assignments in his early twenties, mostly for Ace Books and Avon Books. Understandably, his covers were sometimes reminiscent of his father's style, particularly while illustrating works of Sword and Sorcery, as for ...
Kernahan, Coulson
(1858-1943) UK author and – deeply convinced that World War One was nigh – proselytizer for universal military service between 1900-1914; fifty-five years old when the war broke out, he served as a commissioned recruiter. His early works of fiction – such as A Dead Man's Diary, Written After His Decease (February-?? 1890 Lippincott's Magazine UK; 1890), A Book of Strange Sins (coll 1893) and ...
Robinson, Roger
(1943- ) UK computer programmer, bibliographer and publisher, active in UK Fandom for many years. The Writings of Henry Kenneth Bulmer (1983 chap; rev 1984 chap) is an exhaustive Bibliography of one of the most prolific sf writers, Kenneth Bulmer, and Who's Hugh?: An SF Reader's Guide to Pseudonyms (1987) is similarly exhaustive in its ...