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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 ...
Kinross, Albert
(1870-1929) UK soldier, editor, journalist and author in various genres, of sf interest for The Fearsome Island: Being a Modern Rendering of the Narrative of one Silas Fordred, Master Mariner of Hythe, Whose Shipwreck and Subsequent Adventures Are Herein Set Forth, Also an Appendix Accounting in a Rational Manner for the Seeming Marvels that Silas Fordred Encountered During his Sojourn on the Fearsome Island of Don Diego Rodriguez (1896), the subtitle being explanatory. The ...
Vidphone
One of the oldest and once most commonly used items of sf Terminology. Early hack writers, casting around for ways of making the future seem more different and exciting than the present, generally hit upon the vidphone before anything else – though Hugo Gernsback in Ralph 124C 41+: A Romance of the Year 2660 (April 1911-March 1912 Modern Electrics; exp as fixup 1925; rev 1950) called it the ...
Ultrawave
A once fairly common item of sf Terminology, denoting Imaginary Science radio-like Communications operating Faster Than Light. This sf coinage seems to have been first used in Lester del Rey's "Habit" (November 1939 Astounding); it appears in E E Smith's ...
Hansman, William
(1913-2000) Canadian-born US author whose sf novel is The A.G. Man (1968). [JC/DRL]
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 ...