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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 ...
Johnston, E K
(? - ) Canadian archaeologist and author, active in fan fiction (see Fandom) from 2002; she has specialized in Young Adult fantasy from her first series, the Dragon Slayer of Trondheim sequence beginning with The Story of Owen (2014) and the Thousand Nights sequence beginning with A Thousand Nights (2015), which retells material from the Nights [for ...
Shepard, Lucius
(1943-2014) US author about whose first appearances in print there has been some confusion; he was credited with four stories and four articles in Collins Magazine (variously retitled Collins, the Magazine to Grow Up With and Collins Young Elizabethan) between 1952 and 1955, the first actual piece of fiction being "Camp Greenville" (January 1953 Collins, the Magazine to Grow Up With), where the author is listed (accurately) as being nine years old. Confusion was ...
James, Dolan
(? - ) US author of a mildly pornographic sf novel, Space Swappers (1970; vt Solar System Swingers 1992 as by Dodie St James), in which two male "swingers", frustrated by exiguous Sex on Earth, go to Mars where green-skinned humanoid females are easy prey. No hard data has surfaced about the latter title. [JC]
Dryfoos, Dave
(1915-2003) US author who began publishing work of genre interest with "Lest Ye Be Judged ..." in Fantastic Adventures for October 1950. Of his small but generally competent array of published tales, nineteen (all but two) have been assembled as The Ninth Golden Age of Science Fiction Megapack (coll 2014 ebook); their original appearance in such journals as Astounding, Galaxy, ...
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 ...