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.
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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 ...
Pyle, Nathan W
(1982- ) US television production designer, cartoonist and author best known for his popular webcomic Strange Planet, launched in February 2019 and set in a world of typically blue, hairless, Alien (though Pyle avoids this term) humanoids shaped rather like the traditional Alien Greys of ufological tradition (see UFOs). These beings constantly discuss or enact human quirks and human situations with the kind of ...
Ion Drive
A common item of sf Terminology derived from a theoretical means of Rocket propulsion. Chemically fuelled rockets are hampered by the necessity of carrying large burdens of fuel. Other systems, including the ion drive, propose using much lighter fuels, compensating for the decrease in the mass available for propulsion by ejecting it at correspondingly higher velocities. Ions (charged particles) can be accelerated to enormous ...
Toomorrow
Film (1970). Sweet Music/Lowndes Productions/United Artists. Written and directed by Val Guest. Cast includes Karl Chambers, Vic Cooper, Roy Dotrice, Olivia Newton-John and Benny Thomas. 95 minutes. Colour. / This is an unsuccessful attempt by producer Harry Saltzman, best known for the James Bond films, to mix pop Music with sf. An embarrassingly made-to-order pop group is kidnapped by Aliens from outer space (who have ...
Gauld, Tom
(1976- ) Scottish illustrator, cartoonist and author, active since the beginning of the twenty-first century; he is perhaps best known for a weekly strip cartoon published in the Guardian, a first representative assembly of this material being You're All Just Jealous of My Jetpack (graph coll 2013); Baking With Kafka (graph coll 2017) also contains material from other sources, often directly using sf imagery and themes; Goliath ...
Langford, David
(1953- ) UK author, critic, editor, publisher and sf fan, in the latter capacity recipient of 21 Hugo awards for fan writing – some of the best of his several hundred pieces are assembled as Let's Hear It for the Deaf Man (coll 1992 chap US; much exp vt The Silence of the Langford 1996; exp 2015 ebook) as Dave Langford, edited by Ben Yalow – plus five Best Fanzine Hugos ...