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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 ...
Astounding She-Monster, The
Film (1957; vt Mysterious Invader UK). Hollywood International Pictures, American International Pictures. Produced and directed by Ronald V Ashcroft (credited as Ronnie Ashcroft). Written by Frank Hall and Ashcroft (uncredited) from their original story. Cast includes Robert Clarke, Kenne Duncan, Marilyn Harvey, Shirley Kilpatrick and Jeanne Tatum. 62 minutes. Black and white. / Geologist Dick Cutler (Clarke) is in the ...
Ruddick, Nicholas
(1952- ) UK bibliographer, editor and author, in Canada from 1974. He has perhaps been most influential for his two linked examinations of UK sf, British Science Fiction: A Chronology, 1478-1990 (1992) and Ultimate Island: On the Nature of British Science Fiction (1993). Though its title ascriptions lack full bibliographical detail, the first volume provides an extremely useful chronological run-through of the British scene, each separately ...
Green, Roland J
(1944-2021) US author whose first sale was the first volume in the Wandor Sword-and-Sorcery sequence (see listing below), though his first published work was a volume in the similar Richard Blade sequence [see Checklist below – he wrote numbers 9 through 37, with the exception of number 30] under the House Name Jeffrey Lord. His sf has generally been written in ...
Barney, John Stewart
(1867-1924) US architect, artist and author whose sf novel, L.P.M.: The End of the Great War (1915), is an unusually authoritarian Edisonade in which an impatiently triumphal US Scientist – in this case his name is Edestone – uses the Antigravity device he has invented to render invincible his vast Zeppelin (see Airships) which is called the ...
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 ...