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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 ...
Torres Quesada, Ángel
(1940- ) Spanish author, very popular and prolific in sf, fantasy and horror; he has also written as by A Thorkent or Alex Towers. He has published at least 128 novels, three collections and more than thirty short stories and novellas. His first book was Un mundo llamado Badoom ["A World Called Badoom"] (1963), a Pulp-style sf novel. His early stories were included in some of the most important anthologies of that time, such as ...
Roberts, Jane
(1929-1984) US author perhaps best remembered for such speculative works as Dialogues of the Soul & Mortal Self in Time (1975), which take the form of a series of connected poems based, as was much of her voluminous speculative works, on lessons she claimed were channelled through her by an entity known as Seth. She began publishing work of genre interest with "The Red Wagon" for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in December 1956. Her ...
Grattan-Smith, T E
(1871-1946) Australian ventriloquist, journalist and author of children's fiction (see Children's SF) born Thomas Edward Grattan Smith, using Grattan-Smith for his publishing activities. His Lost World novel, The Cave of a Thousand Columns (1938) exposes two young adventurers to Monsters and a non-human species known as the Birdmen in vast Underground ...
Versins, Pierre
The name adopted by French scholar, author and self-styled utopian Jacques Chamson (1923-2001), a survivor of Auschwitz. He began writing sf in the 1950s, publishing several novels, including Les étoiles ne s'en foutent pas ["The Stars Care"] (1954), En avant, Mars ["Forward to Mars"] (1955), Feu d'artifice ["Fireworks"] (Paris: Métal, 1955) and Le professeur ["The Professor"] (1956), and over 20 stories (some with his wife ...
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 ...