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
Sponsor of the day: Handheld Press
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 ...
Mezrich, Ben
(1969- ) US broadcaster and author who remains best known for nonfiction books like Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six MIT Students Who Took Vegas for Millions (2002), a narrative whose dramatic licence inspired accusations that it was fiction, and The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook, A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius, and Betrayal (2009); he also writes as by Holden Scott. Of sf interest are several medical thrillers ...
Christopher, Adam
Working name of New Zealand-born author Adam Christopher McGechan (1978- ), in the UK from 2006, who began publishing work of genre interest with "The Devil in Chains, Part One" in Pantechnicon for September 2008, soon followed by "The Devil in Chains, Part Two" (March 2009 Pantechnicon). His first novel, Empire State (2012), is a noir thriller set in a retro Alternate World or ...
Estrin, Marc
(1939- ) US cellist and author, whose first novel, Insect Dreams: The Half Life of Gregor Samsa (2002), translates the story of Samsa, from Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis (1915 chap; trans 1937), into what might be called sf: after his transformation into a giant bug, Samsa is rescued by his family's maid and sold to a circus, from which vantage he observes and manifests through his inner life the ...
Hemry, John G
(1956- ) US author best known for his Military SF sequences. The Stark series, beginning with Starks' War (2000) and ending with Stark's Crusade (2002), features near space conflict in the Near Future. The Paul Sinclair series, beginning with A Just Determination (2003) and ending with Against All Enemies (2006), features an adept legal ...
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 ...