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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 ...
Magnetic Monster, The
Film (1953). A-Men Productions/United Artists. Directed by Curt Siodmak. Written by Siodmak, Ivan Tors. Cast includes Jean Byron, Richard Carlson and King Donovan. 76 minutes. Black and white. / A new isotope, created in a laboratory, sucks in nearby energy and doubles its size every few hours; eventually it may destroy the Earth. The first part of the film shows it being tracked down by scientific investigators, puzzled at the strange magnetic ...
Underwood, Michael R
(? - ) US author who began publishing work of genre interest with "Last Tango in Gamma Sector" in Crossed Genres for June 2010. His first series, the Ree Reyes sequence beginning with Geekomancy (2012 ebook). is fantasy. He is of sf interest for the Genrenauts sequence of Young Adult tales beginning with The Shootout Solution (2015), in which a ...
Future Histories
The grouping of generally independent-seeming sf stories into an overarching "History of the Future" is a device most famously used by Robert A Heinlein, who caught the imagination of 1940s Fandom with a timeline featuring colourful labels like "The Crazy Years" – summarized by a sequence of mildly bizarre "1969" newspaper headlines in Methuselah's Children (July-September 1941 Astounding; rev ...
Fantasy Fiction
1. US Digest-size magazine. Two issues, May and November 1950, published by Magabook, edited by Curtis Mitchell. "Old and New Fantasy Stories but Always the Best" was the slogan of this short-lived magazine, whose stories were largely reprinted from general Pulps of the 1930s and early 1940s. It also offered prizes for reports of true fantastic experiences and haunted houses. #2 was retitled Fantasy Stories, carried a lengthy ...
Clute, John
(1940- ) Canadian critic, editor and author, in the UK from 1969; married to Judith Clute from 1964, partner of Elizabeth Hand since 1996. He began to publish work of genre interest with an sf-tinged poem "Carcajou Lament" in Triquarterly for Winter 1960 [ie Autumn 1959]; he began consistently publishing sf reviews in his "New Fiction" column for the Toronto Star (1966-1967), and later in ...