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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 ...
Johnson, Kenneth R [2]
(1942- ) UK journalist, author of books on occult and fringe science, and Horror author included here to distinguish him from the US bibliographer Kenneth R Johnson and the US television worker and novelist Kenneth Johnson. The UK Johnson also publishes as Ken Johnson and Kenneth Rayner Johnson (the Rayner being his mother's maiden name). His novels are ...
Werewolf, The
Film (1956). Clover Productions. Produced by Sam Katzman. Directed by Fred F Sears. Narrated by Sears. Cast includes Joyce Holden (Amy), S John Launer, George Lynn, Don Megowan, Steven Ritch and Eleanore Tanin. 79 minutes. Black and white. / Unscrupulous Scientists Dr Emery Forrest (Launer) and Dr Morgan Chambers (Lynn) have been secretly working on a serum meant to immunize humans against radiation poisoning in case the ...
Kircher, Athanasius
(1602-1680) German Jesuit priest and polymath, author of at least thirty ambitious texts unified by a profound desire to detect and determine and correlate original causes in all phenomena; his influence on later generations has been severely dissipated by his initial, conservative Christian adherence to a geocentric model of the universe (a century after Copernicus), though he changed his mind, and by the fact that – far more than other "sleepwalkers" into ...
Monster Movies
A term colloquially used for a very specific genre of film, usually borderline sf. A monster movie – sometimes called a Creature Feature – must contain the unexpected appearance, normally in a serene setting, of a creature (or many creatures) hostile to humanity. The nature of the creature is usually revealed gradually, and its attacks normally increase in severity. It may be a mutated animal or human (see Mutants), an Alien, a ...
Robinson, Roger
(1943- ) UK computer programmer, bibliographer and publisher, active in UK Fandom for many years. The Writings of Henry Kenneth Bulmer (1983 chap; rev 1984 chap) is an exhaustive Bibliography of one of the most prolific sf writers, Kenneth Bulmer, and Who's Hugh?: An SF Reader's Guide to Pseudonyms (1987) is similarly exhaustive in its ...