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 ...
Internet
As with Computers, sf representations of the internet have tended to lag somewhat behind reality – a noted example being the Far-Future galactic communications board in Vernor Vinge's A Fire Upon the Deep (1992), which precisely and wittily reproduces the format and occasional incoherence of contemporary Usenet newsgroup discussions (then a major and now a fading aspect of the ...
Wilson, Anna
(1954- ) UK-born author, now in the US. Both of her novels are sharp Feminist parables. Altogether Elsewhere (1985) depicts a Near-Future feminist vigilante backlash against male violence. Hatching Stones (1991) portrays a society in which males largely abandon females when Genetic Engineering allows them to Clone ...
Hume, Fergus
(1859-1932) UK lawyer and author raised in New Zealand from the age of three until 1885, then in Australia for three years, finally back in the UK from 1888, after the detective novel The Mystery of a Hansom Cab (1886) made his name, though not his fortune, as he had sold all rights for fifty pounds before its success; along with some later books with fantastic elements, the novel is examined in Blockbuster!: Fergus Hume and the Mystery of a Hansom Cab (2015) by Lucy ...
Terrahawks
UK tv series (1983-1986). Anderson Burr Pictures/London Weekend Television. Created by Gerry Anderson, produced by Anderson, Christopher Burr; directors Alan Pattillo, Tony Bell, Tony Lenny, Desmond Saunders; all episodes written by Tony Barwick (one with Trevor Lansdown) except for pilot, by Anderson. Three seasons, 39 25-minute episodes in all. / Using more advanced puppets than in all his SuperMarionation ...
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 ...