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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 ...
Tanner, Ron
(1953- ) US teacher, musician and author whose short fiction is usually nonfantastic though fruitfully exorbitant; his sf novel, Kiss Me, Stranger: An Illustrated Novel (2011), is a Satire set in a balkanized Dystopian America at a point seemingly close to the End of the World; attempting to keep her family together, the female protagonist runs through a gamut of ...
Morgan, Lara
Pseudonym of Australian author Lara Brncic (1971- ), whose first series, the Twins of Saranthium sequence beginning with Awakening (2008), is fantasy [not listed below]. She is of sf interest for The Rosie Black Chronicles beginning with The Rosie Black Chronicles: Genesis (2010), set in a Ruined Earth Western Australia about 500 years hence, after society has been divided into three mutually ...
Soft SF
This not very precise item of sf Terminology, formed by analogy with Hard SF, is generally applied either to sf that deals with the Soft Sciences or to sf that does not deal with recognizable science at all, but emphasizes human feelings. The contrasting of soft sf with hard sf is sometimes illogical. Stories of Psi Powers or Supermen, for ...
Kuprin, Alexander
(1870-1938) Russian author, active from before 1890, whose first novella of significance, "Moloch" (December 1896 Russkoye Bogatstvo), goes to extremities akin to Fantastika in its attempts to render the terror and disastrousness of unfettered capitalist exploitation. Most of his remaining oeuvre is nonfantastic, though some sf is assembled in a French translation, Le soleil liquide et autres récits fantastiques ...
Robinson, Roger
(1943- ) UK computer programmer, bibliographer and publisher, active in UK Fandom for many years. The Writings of Henry Kenneth Bulmer (1983 chap; rev 1984 chap) is an exhaustive Bibliography of one of the most prolific sf writers, Kenneth Bulmer, and Who's Hugh?: An SF Reader's Guide to Pseudonyms (1987) is similarly exhaustive in its ...