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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 ...
Robertson, Tim
(1944- ) UK-born Australian actor and screenwriter whose Mary Shelley: (A Smoked Opera for the Quick and the Dead) (1983) is a script of sf interest (see Mary Shelley). [JC]
Leroux, Gaston
(1868-1927) French author of mystery novels who remains best known for Le Fantôme de l'Opéra (23 September 1909-8 January 1910 Le Gaulois; 1910; trans Alexander Texeira de Mattos as The Phantom of the Opera 1911), a tale of horror filmed in 1925 (re-released with sound 1930), 1943, 1962, 1983 (for television), 1989 and 1990 (for television) and used as the basis for the highly successful 1986 musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber ...
Smith, Clint
(? - ) US technical writer and author of Infusion (2004), a tale combining aspects of Space Opera – two Consortium planets band together to send an expedition to Earth to plunder it of its "dattan", a resource needed back home – and Ecological fiction: the approaching crisis is seen through from the perspective of a galactic team whose task it is to prevent the ...
MacDougal, John
Collaborative pseudonym of James Blish and Robert A W Lowndes on "Chaos, Co-ordinated" (October 1946 Astounding), a story which makes comic science-fictional use of Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark: An Agony, in Eight Fits (1876 chap). [PN/DRL] links / ...
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 ...