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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 ...
Hernandez, Catherine
(? - ) Canadian actor, playwright and author whose first novel, Scarborough (2017), set in Metropolitan Toronto, is nonfantastic. Her second novel, Crosshairs (2020), set in a Near Future version of Toronto not dissimilar to that depicted in the previous tale, describes a Canada given over to Dystopian oppression, with those of the wrong race (see ...
England Invaded
Film (1909). Warwick Trading Company. Directed and written by Leo Stormont. Story may have been based without credit on Guy du Maurier's An Englishman's Home (performed 27 January 1909; 1909 chap). Cast not given. 10 minutes. Black and white. / Like The Airship Destroyer (1909) directed by Walter R Booth earlier the same year, ...
Powlik, James
(? - ) Canadian oceanographer and author, whose first novel, Sea Change (1999), sees the oceans threatened by mutated micro-organisms (see Horror in SF; Mutants); second tale dealing with the threatened oceans of the world, Meltdown (2000), is a Technothriller in which a source of deadly radiation under the Arctic may bring about ...
Elite
Videogame (1984). Designed by David Braben, Ian Bell. Platforms: BBCMicro, Electron (1984); AppleII, C64, Spectrum (1985); Amstrad (1986); DOS, MSX (1987); Amiga, AtariST (1988); NES (1991); rev vt ArcElite, Archimedes (1991); rev vt Elite Plus, DOS (1991). / Elite's gameplay is a perfect fusion of exploration, trading, mining and combat which created its own subtype of ...
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 ...