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 ...
Delacorte, Peter
(1943- ) US author whose sf novel, Time on My Hands (1997), carries its protagonist back to 1938 Hollywood (see California; Time Travel) with the mission to do anything in his power that will prevent Ronald Reagan from eventually becoming President of the United States; unfortunately for his mission (though fortunately for Reagan, who turns out to be highly likeable), the protagonist's journeys ...
Big Little Books
Compact children's book format inaugurated in late 1932 by the Whitman Publishing Company (Racine, Wisconsin) with The Adventures of Dick Tracy (graph 1932) and widely imitated by other publishers. A typical Big Little Book had a width of 3 5/8 inches and a height of 4½ inches, with 432 pages making a fat little volume 1½ inches thick (roughly 9.2 cm x 11.4 cm x 3.8cm). Every page of text was faced by a full-page captioned picture. Many ...
Decima Vittima, La
Film (1965; vt The Tenth Victim). Champion/Concordia. Directed by Elio Petri. Written by Petri, Ennio Flaiano, Tonino Guerra, Giorgio Salvione, based on "Seventh Victim" (April 1953 Galaxy) by Robert Sheckley. Cast includes Ursula Andress, Elsa Martinelli, Marcello Mastroianni and Massimo Serato. 92 minutes. Colour. / This French-Italian coproduction is based loosely on Sheckley's story about a future world where, ...
Collins, Suzanne
(1962- ) US screenwriter for Television and author whose first series – the Young Adult Underland Chronicles beginning with Gregor the Overlander (2003; vt Gregor and the Rats of Underland 2006) and ending with Gregor and the Code of the Claw (2007) – sets its young protagonist on a quest for his sister down a rabbit-hole-like Portal into an ...
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 ...