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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 ...
Niccol, Andrew
(1964- ) New Zealand filmmaker who migrated to London in the mid-eighties, where he directed television commercials before moving to Hollywood in the nineties to write and direct feature films. After being bought out of his contract to direct his spec screenplay The Truman Show (1998) in favour of veteran Australian director Peter Weir, he made his debut as writer-director with the stylish ...
Fridge
UK self-styled "post-rock" band, comprising Kieran Hebden (1980- ) and Adem. Their work is mostly instrumental, an attractive melodic delicacy set against puffing, chittering beats, and demonstrates a persistent fascination with science fiction, not only in song-titles – "Robots in Disguise" on Ceefax (1997); "Ark", "Yttrium" and "Aphelion" on Eph (1999) but also in a fondness for samples of sf film sound effects ...
Greenleaf, Sue
(? -? ) US author and Feminist who, given the setting of her only sf novel, has been identified as the Sue Greenleaf who was based in Fort Worth, Texas, and Saltillo, Mexico, and eventually in San Francisco. A copy of Liquid from the Sun's Rays (1901; vt Don Miguel Lehumada, Discoverer of the Liquid from the Sun's Rays 1906) is subtitled, possibly in the author's hand, «A Romance in Future Mexico ...
Hard Time on Planet Earth
US tv series (1989). Demos-Bard/Shanachie Productions/Touchstone Television for CBS-TV. Produced by Janice Cooke Leonard, Michael Piller, and Rick Rondell. Directors included Bill Corcoran, Michael Lange, Robert Mandell, Piller, and Al Waxman. Writers included Bruce Cervi, E Jack Kaplan, Nicholas Corea, and Piller. Cast includes Martin Kove and Danny Mann. 13 60-minute episodes. Colour. / An Alien warrior from an unnamed planet is convicted of taking part ...
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 ...