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 ...
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2
Animated film (2013). Sony Pictures Animation/Columbia Pictures. Directed by Cody Cameron and Kris Pearn. Written by John Francis Daley, Jonathan M Goldstein and Erica Rivinoja, based on story by Phil Lord, Chris Miller and Rivinoja. Cast includes Anna Faris, Will Forte and Bill Hader. 95 minutes. Colour. / The fact that original directors and writers Lord and Miller only return as executive producers with a story credit would usually spell danger, particularly given the directorial ...
Atomic Platters
The name – coined by Bill Geerhart at the Conelrad website [see links below] – for a short-lived sub-genre of 1940s and 1950s pop music concerned with an atomic World War Three and its aftermath (see Holocaust). Many, though not all, of the artists and songs that might be so classified fell into later obscurity, but this was in its day a fairly lively aural manifestation of the fascinations of ...
Reichert, Mickey Zucker
Working name of US medical doctor and author Miriam Zucker Reichert (1962- ), who began publishing work of genre interest with "Homecoming" for Space & Time for Winter 1989. Almost all of her fiction has been fantasy [selected titles only in Checklist]; but her ninth novel, The Unknown Soldier (1994), is an sf tale about an Amnesiac soldier whose treatment in hospital is complicated by doubts over his origins in time ...
BBC Radiophonic Workshop, The
Founded in 1958, this department of the BBC was tasked with providing both sound effects and original music for BBC radio and television programming. Desmond Briscoe (1925-2006) and Daphne Oram (1925-2003), who had previously composed original electronic music for radio works by Samuel Beckett (1906-1989) and Giles Cooper, were the founding recruits. They soon established the Workshop's reputation for innovative, striking music and all manner of sound effects. ...
Langford, David
(1953- ) UK author, critic, editor, publisher and sf fan, in the latter capacity recipient of 21 Hugo awards for fan writing – some of the best of his several hundred pieces are assembled as Let's Hear It for the Deaf Man (coll 1992 chap US; much exp vt The Silence of the Langford 1996; exp 2015 ebook) as Dave Langford, edited by Ben Yalow – plus five Best Fanzine Hugos ...