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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 ...
Bullett, Gerald
(1893-1958) UK broadcaster, poet and author, in active service during World War One, active as an author from 1916 or earlier, and as a broadcaster from April 1926, when he was the first author to read a story of his own composition on the BBC; he also wrote as by Sebastian Fox. Much of his short fiction contains fantasy elements, often with a surreal edge [for details on fantasy stories by Bullett, and for Crosshatch and Faerie below, see The ...
Griffiths, John
(1934- ) UK author in whose sf novel, The Survivors (1965), an assorted group of folk hang on in a Cornish cave after China starts World War Three. A nonfiction (and significantly unliterary) study, Three Tomorrows: American, British and Soviet Science Fiction (1980), treats the genre as a forum, defined – according to the sociological principles of Karl Mannheim (1893-1947), author of ...
Scott, R T M
Form of name used independently by two Canadian authors, father and son, both christened Reginald Thomas Maitland Scott, though the son was usually called Robert and sometimes wrote simply as Maitland Scott. Scott Senior (1882-1966) had been a much-travelled marine engineer and subsequent soldier during World War One, with the Canadian Expeditionary Force, before settling in the USA and turning to writing. His first story, "Such Bluff as Dreams Are Made Of" (April 1920 ...
Johnson, Annabel
(1921-2013) US author, mostly of Young Adult novels beginning in 1956, about half of them in collaboration with her husband, Edgar Johnson, who is not to be confused with Edgar Johnson (1901-1972), an earlier novelist. Of sf interest, all written with Johnson, are An Alien Music (1982); The Danger Quotient (1984), set initially in a Ruined Earth 130 years after ...
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 ...