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
Sponsor of the day: The League of Fan Funds
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 ...
Deus Ex Machina
Videogame (1984). Automata UK. Designed by Mel Croucher. Platforms: Spectrum (1984); MSX (1985); C64 (1986). / Deus Ex Machina is a member of no recognizable school of Videogame design, though its anarchic ethos can be seen in many other British games of the time. It is, rather, the computer game reconceived as concept album (see SF Music); it shares more with the work ...
Buchard, Robert
(1931- ) Swiss-born soldier, journalist and author long resident in France, whose sf novel, Trente Secondes sur New York (1969; trans June P Wilson and Walter B Michaels as Thirty Seconds Over New York 1970), depicts the Near Future nuclear bombing of New York by a Chinese plane that replaces a destroyed civilian airliner in midflight. The pilot is happy to sacrifice his own life in ...
Christopher, Adam
Working name of New Zealand-born author Adam Christopher McGechan (1978- ), in the UK from 2006, who began publishing work of genre interest with "The Devil in Chains, Part One" in Pantechnicon for September 2008, soon followed by "The Devil in Chains, Part Two" (March 2009 Pantechnicon). His first novel, Empire State (2012), is a noir thriller set in a retro Alternate World or ...
Robinson, Kim Stanley
(1952- ) US author who began writing sf stories with "Coming Back to Dixieland" and "In Pierson's Orchestra", both published in Orbit 18 (anth 1975) edited by Damon Knight. He initially published solely in shorter forms, releasing about ten stories before gaining his PhD in English at the University of California in 1982, studying under Fredric Jameson. In revised form, his thesis was later ...
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 ...