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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 ...
Cabin in the Woods, The
Film (2012). Lionsgate presents a Mutant Enemy production in association with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and United Artists. Directed by Drew Goddard. Written by Goddard and Joss Whedon. Cast includes Amy Acker, Kristen Connolly, Tim DeZarn, Chris Hemsworth, Anna Hutchison, Richard Jenkins, Fran Kranz, Sigourney Weaver, Brian J White, Bradley Whitford and Jesse Williams. 95 minutes. Colour. / The Clichés of "slasher" ...
Powys, John Cowper
(1872-1963) UK author, resident for much of his career in the USA, though he returned to Wales in the 1930s, active from around 1896 until a year or so before his death; the first half century of his career as a novelist was mostly devoted to tales in which civilization, out of touch with the mythopoeic nature of reality, conspicuously lacks an understanding of the primacy of Sex in true Religion. They are of some interest where they enter ...
Mars Needs Women
Made-for-tv film (1967). Azalea Pictures/American-International Television. Produced and directed by Larry Buchanan. Written by Buchanan. Cast includes Yvonne Craig and Tommy Kirk. 83 minutes. Colour. / Dop (Kirk) is leader of an expedition from Mars whose mission is to procure five Earthwomen for breeding purposes. Having mysteriously broadcast "Mars Needs Women" to the US Space Agency, Dop and his four companions reach Earth: there follows a "battle" ...
Sierra, Javier
Working name of Spanish journalist and author Javier Sierra Albert (1971- ) whose first novel, La dama azul (1998; trans James Graham as The Lady in Blue 2007), presents a conspiracy-drenched rendering of the life of a seventeenth-century nun with the powers of temporal bilocation (see Pseudoscience; Psi Powers; Timeslip) who has appeared to Native ...
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 ...