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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 ...
California
It is easy to concur with the adage that California was not so much discovered as invented: that California is, therefore, pure sf. A rhetorically and pragmatically attractive underlying premise of this sort arguably infuses central anatomies of the state like Mike Davis's City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles (1990) and elsewhere. Certainly, with the possible exception of the legend of El Dorado, there is little before 1800 that ...
Crazies, The
Film (1973; vt Code Name Trixie). Cambist Films. Directed by George Romero. Written by Romero, based on a story by Paul McCollough. Cast includes Lane Carroll, Harold Wayne Jones and W G McMillan. 104 minutes. Colour. / A plane carrying germ-warfare material crashes near a small US town and pollutes the drinking-water, causing an epidemic of homicidal and psychopathic behaviour in the inhabitants. The army moves in and the crazed brutality ...
Kruchten, Marcia H
(1932-2010) US author of a juvenile fantasy, The Ghost in the Mirror (1985 chap), and of a Tie to the Shared World Omni Odysseys sequence, Skyborn (1988; vt Skytorn 1988). [JC]
Rinkoff, Barbara Jean
(1923-1975) US author of books for children, of which Elbert, the Mind Reader (1967) has, as its title indicates, some sf interest. [JC]
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 ...