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.
Site updated on 25 July 2024
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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 ...
Egypt
A full entry for sf in Egypt must await a contributor fluent in its language and able to report from the inside on the development of the genre there, and on untranslated works. Relevant authors given entries in this encyclopedia are Omar El Akkad, Tawfiq al-Hakim, Mohamed Kheir, Mustafa Mahmud, Ramez Naam and Aḩmad ...
World War Three
Following the 1945 Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs which ended World War Two, a third world War involving nuclear Holocaust became the recurring nightmare of twentieth-century sf throughout the Cold War decades and even beyond. Often it was tacitly assumed that a third world war would constitute the final instalment of a worldwide state of conflict that began in 1914 and whose ...
Spaced Invaders
Film (1989). Smart Egg Pictures. Directed by Patrick Read Johnson. Written by Johnson, Scott Alexander. Cast includes J J Anderson, Fred Applegate, Douglas Barr, Gregg Berger, Royal Dano and Ariana Richards. 100 minutes. Colour. / This spoof, obviously made for younger viewers, starts promisingly with the premise that the diminutive crew of a Martian Spaceship, in the middle of a battle, pick up the radio signal of Orson ...
Lönnerstrand, Sture
(1919-1999) Swedish poet and author. In his teens Lönnerstrand began reading US Pulp SF Magazines, which fascinated him, but initially he set his goals higher: he wanted to be a poet. He went to university in Lund, though as far as is known without graduating, and there published his first two books of poetry; the second, Där ["There"] (1941), is an epic ...
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 ...